I highly recommend reading the entire article because it's a good read and can't be adequately summarized in this way but here it is anyway:
So-called productivity techniques usually end up having the opposite effect, in either the short-term, long-term or both.
An obvious example is making workers work more leads to tired and frustrated workers over the long term. Or giving tight
deadlines to increase throughput: just results in anxiety and slower net progress. That's manual labor -- for anything
else, the perils are even greater: "Because you don't get creativity for free".
However, the problem is even more fundamental. This trendy and increased desire for "efficiency", backed by capitalism and
basic human greed, has a lasting effect on the psyche of society and it's individuals. In 1930, Keynes predicted that
within a century, we would be working 15 hour work weeks, due to increased efficiency. That's hardly the case today. I
enjoyed the carpet example: we created a vacuum to be more productive with cleaning the carpets, which would theoretically
result in less time spent cleaning. However, now that we have vacuums, carpets are expected to be spotless, so we spend
more time cleaning them anyway, and finding new ways to clean them even further. "Work expands so as to fill the time available
for it's completion" -- Parkinson's Law.
Finally the overall message is that we should slow down and live for the sake of living. Don't walk to exercise and get
healthy -- walk to walk. Don't "party for contracts, lunch for contacts". Do things for their own intrinsic value. "Growth
for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell". These ideologies need to be implemented at the societal level
as well as the personal level.