As I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires, meandering nonchalantly like a fly in winter, I thought about the concept of productivity and temperature. Specifically, their correlation.
Why is it that cities that have seasons or are in colder temperatures tend to be larger, have more companies, more business, and more wealth?
But if the summer heat slowed me down so much, then my theory about different seasons didn’t hold. Then I thought about air conditioning. I decided to look up the effect on temperature and productivity, to which I found a lot of information.
For example 1/3 of participants in a CareerBuilder survey said their productivity was affected by temperature. If an office is too hot or too cold, it’s practically impossible to concentrate. I found the same when traveling in Central America. Even if the WiFi was working, all you could think of was the beach and fast-melting ice cream.
Below is a productivity graph from productivity-science.com.
“As you can see, the productivity changes significantly and highest performance achieved in relatively short peak between 70° F (21° C) and 73° (23° C). Outside 63° F (17° C) and 82° F (28° C) temperature range the productivity decreases more than 5% and significantly impacts on workers ability to work and even can influence health”
This makes sense now, as I searched for a place with air conditioning to help dry my sweat and allow me to concentrate. So I were in the perfect temperature all along…