We’re in a productivity crisis, according to 52 years of data. Things could get really bad.

Author’s Note: This article was written over 60 hours with love and care using the blockbuster mental model. If you like my writing style, and you want to create high-quality viral content using the blockbuster approach, you’ll love my Blockbuster Blueprint newsletter, which delivers three in-depth articles every week.

“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.”
— Peter Drucker

I spent over 500 hours researching and writing this article. Those 500 hours were spent reading through dozens of books/studies in 10+ fields (history, economics, technology, philosophy of science, manufacturing, management, sociology, investing, innovation). I spent so much time because the topic was both much more interesting and complicated than I originally thought. And, as is the case with all of my writing on Medium, I use the blockbuster philosophy. This means I don't click publish unless I think it is one of the best articles that has been written on the topic.

As a result of going through the research process, I…