From a capitalist perspective all it means is "more money extracted from the same amount of labor". I agree with you in general regarding personal productivity

From a capitalist perspective all it means is "more money extracted from the same amount of labor". I agree with you in general regarding personal productivity. However from the capitalist perspective, even if you aren't as "productive" in the later hours, it's still a production cost that they no longer have to hire another person for. Every person hired is not just an "hourly cost" but an extra capital incentive. It's why they love to fire people and make more people take on a heavier load. To us, on the bottom it feels like less productivity (and man do I feel you there!), but to them it's one less cost. And that's what "productivity" is in their eyes. As long as they can extract enough value without having to take on the extra expense, they will call it "productivity increase". Another interesting book about some of this is a stochastic approach to economics (from a left-wing perspective) - The Laws of Chaos: A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy: http://symbioid.com/pdf/Politics/laws%20of%20chaos%20probabilistic%20approach%20to%20political%20economy.pdf http://symbioid.com/pdf/Politics/laws%20of%20chaos%20probabi...