12 Science Approved Hacks To Boss Your Productivity

12. Work In Smaller Groups

Too many cooks spoil the broth - never before has this rung more true.

The founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos, has a “two pizza” rule that states that if you can't feed your team with two pizzas then it's too big.

The problem stems from an effect known as “social loafing”. This occurs when people begin to put in less effort when working in a group, due to the reduced culpability of the individual and the bigger the group, the greater the effect. The upshot of this is that a large group can actually be less productive than an individual.

There are a number of factors that feed into the effect, including the difficulties involved in coordinating large groups of people and the "dispensability of effort" effect in which an individual will feel as though their input is less important the larger the group is and will therefore less likely to put the effort in at all.

If you really need to involve everyone, but need to get things done, you're much better off splitting into smaller teams or even working individually and then coming back together to collate your results.