Temperature and Productivity

December 22, 2009 at 2:44 pm

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, and their c correlation.  Why is it that cities that have seasons or are in colder temperatures tend to be larger, have more companies, more business, 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.  Too hot or too cold and it’s impossible to concentrate.  I found the same when traveling in Central America.  If the wi-fi was working, still all you could think of was the beach and fast-melting ice cream.

Below is a productivity graph from productivity-science.com.  They say

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 dry my sweat beads and allow me to concentrate, as though I were in the perfect temperature all along.

Temperature and Productivity graphic