Craftsmanship – The alternative to the four-hour work week mindset
hackernoon.com
hackernoon.com
I've seen this thought expressed before in writing about Startups. If you're not burning your life down 24/7 in the struggle to make it Big, you're doing it wrong.
But that's silly.
The entire goal of building a business, in my mind, is to get the point where you can lounge on a beach or travel the world and not need to actively engage in anything except the pursuit of happiness.
I personally averaged out at a little less than four hours of work per week in 2017, running the sort of low maintenance, feature complete, Software-as-a-Service business that the author spends a paragraph explaining is not in fact a "serious company".
But look at the product and you'll see craftsmanship. Ten years of work, in fact as of roughly today. But never at the author's pace. Always at mine. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
That's the great thing about building a business. You can do it any way you like.
Often this means working hard, but not in a way that burns you out.
If not, and you did spend more time in the first few years getting the business established, then how can you compare your relaxation on maintenance mode of a business after it is running smoothly with the initial effort it takes to get off the ground? That's pulling up the ladder after you succeeded, not relevant advice.
It wasn't my main revenue stream during the early years, and didn't hit the six figure, quit the day job level until maybe year five or six.
As to ladders, I spend most of my time here and on my blog [1] explaining in detail how to climb it, and encouraging people to do so. Sadly, few choose to. The VC route has a much better PR team, selling the benefits of rockets over ladders.
Balance is still important, but work is how I access flow, so it's frequently centering and soothing.
While I admire, and respect the wishes of a lot of younger people in my industry these days to want to travel a lot, and build a business that can be operated anywhere, I think a lot of them don't yet have the realisation that anything you do day in day out, can become routine, boring and something that you will yearn to be 'free' from after a while.
You seem to both understand, and maybe have overcome at one time or another, this sentiment. Would you have any advice for someone who seems to experience this chronically?
I shall use an acquaintance/client of mine that I have known for years as an illustration. A very successful businessman, he and his family have a love of the Balinese lifestyle, though they live here in Australia.
His wealth and success meant that he could buy a huge property just outside town and turn it into a little 'mini Bali resort'. He had a beautiful artificial lagoon, plunge pools, thatch huts etc. It really was the envy of most people here.
But after about 2 years of that, they sold the property. I was as shocked as most other people and asked him why, but he said that it just became too 'samey' day after day, living in that resort style environment, and they were craving something different.
So they actually moved to Bali, and bought a house there. After about 12 months, they moved back. Once again, I asked, and received a similar answer. Living in 'holiday mode' for months on end, and getting waited on hand and foot by locals, while it sounded like heaven for most people, turned into a chore, and they got bored and craved something different.
For me personally, I have spent the past decade or so setting up my business so that it can be operated from anywhere. We bought quite a nice house with a downstairs separate office so I could work from home and be near the kids when they were younger and going to school just up the road.
Whilst 80% of the time, it IS bliss, and works well, and I am happy - there are the odd times that I get cabin fever, or crave working in an office environment again - just for the change mainly.
My solution to that was to essentially go down the 'craftsman' route - by giving up doing general IT support work, which at the time was the mainstay of my business, and focusing on just software development.
But not 'software development' where I would basically be a project manager and farm the actual work out to overseas contractors. I meant 'software development' as a craft where it would only be myself touching the code, liaising with the customers, and doing all the design, coding, testing etc.
Much as a bespoke cobbler or blacksmith would do in the old days - I would talk to a customer who approached me, help them to work out what they wanted, and then (this is the important bit) I would decide whether to take on the job, or refer them onto another colleague.
I would only take on work that I found challenging, or that would push me to learn new technologies or methodologies. Not TOO much, otherwise I wouldn't be productive, but just enough so that I wouldn't get bored by the project, and could add another small skillset to my experience roster when I had finished.
I also reverted to working on basically one project at a time, and was turning away more work that I was taking on. I would treat each project as an 'end to end' thing - and would take pride when I finished and delivered the results to my client. Throwing myself wholly and solely into my work like this helped to keep my batteries charged a lot longer. I guess it is a lot like a Startup founder working completely focused on their 'baby' (NB, I am also working on a startup of my own at the moment).
Sure that was a bit of a hit on cashflow and profitability, but my personal happiness at work went up. Owning a project from start to finish, then basically being able to hand it over and dust my hands off and stop thinking about it altogether before starting the next one helped to keep me mentally sharp and focused. (Of course, there are always return clients who want extras or enhancements, but I similarly treat those as a whole new separate project each time).
The other thing that helped was to turn my office space into a mix of my hobby and professional passions. I am an avid guitarist, so my programming space is also a mini recording studio, and I often pick up a guitar and play while waiting for downloads/compiles or just in between tedious tasks. That also helps to keep my mind fresh and keeps it from wandering and wishing for different things.
I believe that the death of passion is what brings about that restlessness that people feel when they crave change. Keeping that passion burning and fresh is the key IMHO. Having said that - there is still no substitute for a lengthy break from the day to day routine in your life. I forgot how nice it was to take a holiday away from tech and even guitars every now and then. Keeps me hungry and reminds me how much I miss it. I need to consciously do it more. Hope this little diatribe helped to answer your question in some small way! :)
(Note: For some more background, check the links in my HN bio - you will notice on my business web page, I stress the concept of 'software craftsmanship' there too, so my clients understand how I work).
Sadly, I found out that contracting was based on a butts in seats model and was the most evolved attempt at comiditizing software developers.
I've often evisoned doing something similar to you one day where the model approached that of a general building contractor. A model where I work with clients to determine their business needs and if those needs could be met with software. Then we would negotiate compensation for a deliverable. My bid would take time into account but I wouldn't be getting paid for time but for product.
This is my favorite part about working on iOS apps: Most of them are small enough that they can be built and maintained by a motivated individual, and for most of my clients it is natural to outsource some of the decision-making because their in-house folks only understand websites or desktop apps.
I wish this "software blacksmith" development model was more common.
The amount of resistance that I see to staffing up with dedicated project/people managers everywhere I seem to go is extremely distressing and that feeling grows each passing year. Hearing an 8-years-your-junior boss say to you "I don't want to manage anyone older than me" when evaluating another new hire is a bit of a shock.
The key is to reframe the relationship as not one of being "managed", but as a partnership where he removes the obstacles you have to getting your work done.
One should not have to reframe why age discrimination is illegal/immoral to one’s manager.
I don't frame it that way, either. I see it as a partnership. How you choose to view it can have a remarkable effect.
This reminds me of an old Michael Caine movie where someone asks him about his "superior" at work. He indignantly replies that's his manager, not his superior.
Henry Trewhitt: "You already are the oldest President in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale. I recall, yes, that President Kennedy, who had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuba missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?"
Reagan replies: "Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
In my experience, that is not equally true everywhere in the world.
It's certainly very true in the USA. In my opinion that's partly because college and trade schools are so expensive. Unsurprinsingly, the result is students with less years of experience practicing their craft.
I think this is mostly cultural. The original American craft is business. Everything else is seen through the lens of business. Everything becomes a hustle. Including things that really shouldn't, like teaching a craft, or learning one. In other cultures, the craft itself - practicing it, preserving it, transmitting it - is the priority, and business is a tool to achieve that end. Not so in the US.
I don't know Australia (where I think you're from) but perhaps it's similar there?
It wasn't always like that though, and when I was younger, learning a trade or starting an apprenticeship was something that was highly valued and encouraged across most socio-economic groups. Sadly, that trend seems to be fading with more people encouraging their kids to complete tertiary education, get a degree and join the rat-race/hustle.
I can recall when our town had its own 'go to' citizens where you knew you would get old fashioned expert craftsmanship and service when you needed your car services, or a cabinet made, or a haircut etc., but that tends to have become lost in a sea of bland, homogenised 'me too' businesses.
Most Americans are uninterested in craftsmanship. Actually, I think it's more basic. Most Americans are unaware of craftsmanship. They just do not understand what it is. They think it is a flourish that maybe adds 10%. A knife is a knife. If one costs three times as much because of "better craftsmanship," an American is likely to think that means it has some decorative etchings.
A knife is a knife, so for most Americans, shopping is just about finding the cheapest one. They are all knives, so only a fool would pay $100 when you can get one for $10. They figure that the one that costs $100 is because its maker hasn't put together the most efficient factory, or that it somehow became fashionable, maybe because a movie star had one --- certainly not because it lasts longer, will stay sharper longer, or anything practical like that.
Americans are sometimes okay with spending more on a particular manifestation of a general item. For example, it's okay to have an expensive car. But even then, they don't think Porsches are crafted better. It's that they look better (but for no objective reason, it's just what you like) and that they go faster (but not for any clever reason, they just have a big engine, what's so hard about that?). Or if you're not into sports cars, you might spend a bunch of money on a Jaguar. But the Jaguar is not a more comfortable ride because of more craftsmanship. It's just a matter of adding more padding to the seats and using bigger springs in the suspension. Anyone could do it. You just make things bigger. Bigger is better. More is always better. "Less is more," is some kind of Buddhist mantra by people who can't afford the nice things in life, so they kid themselves.
There are many exceptions. For example, Steve Jobs. Also, I find that many craftsmen appreciate craftsmanship: a plumber, mechanic, or carpenter. The problem is that most Americans don't work in these blue-collar jobs. The goal is white-collar jobs, and maybe that is the root of the problem. In America there are so many ways to make money at a desk or through a clever deal, that that has become the aspiration.
At no point does the 4HWW talk about passively creating a business. What the book does point out is that when you sell billable hours you only make money at work, while if you sell product you make money anytime someone buys your product. Making money from a product sale while asleep is referred to as “passive income”. Any app developer selling an app or web subscription is earning a passive income.
The criticism also ignores the 4HWW approach, which is to talk to experts & run experiments in order to learn the best way to do things rather than flail wildly without guidance.
Lastly, the criticism ignores the “Dreamlining” portion of the 4HWW where Tim explores the difference between ownership of possessions and access to experiences. While many of the methods in 4HWW are now obsolete due to changes in how SEO works and saturation in web businesses, the section on Dreamlining is still worth a read.
>>>The book itself is not really the issue. Ferriss indeed outlines some interesting tips on managing resources to get the highest ROI on your work.
The point of the passive income idea is that you can earn marginally more by increasing your salary, or you can package your efforts in a product and earn exponentially more by scaling the sale of that product.
This is a straw man. Yes, you can invest in something and earn dividends. But someone is very actively managing that company. If someone was managing that company for 4 hours a week, you probably wouldn't want to be an investor. The people who are earning "passive" income from such an investment aren't just paying me the salaryman, they're also paying my salaryman manager.
> or you can package your efforts in a product and earn exponentially more by scaling the sale of that product.
Right, but as I said in my GP, if you have a cash flowing product—which is already a huge and rare accomplishment—and you decide to spend 4 hours a week on it, you're a fool because your company is either growing or it's shrinking. So you want it to be growing.
I think a lot of it comes down to working as little as you need to to make as much as you need to fund the lifestyle you want, especially within the concept of funding experiences vs general consumerism.
At least, that's what I took away from that book. I can't really get on board with some of recent ones where he essentially compiles the transcripts from his podcasts. Sometimes he also seems too in awe of someone to question things like a real interviewer. Not to mention everyone and their pet products of the day.
You’re coming from a more informed position. I haven’t read the books.
> I think a lot of it comes down to working as little as you need to to make as much as you need to fund the lifestyle you want
To me this sounds like having a job. Because while I haven’t read the books, things like geoarbitrage just sounds like an entitled Western pipe dream harkening back to colonialism. It’s 2018, everything is global, everything is changing rapidly. Where there are arbitrages, they’re not for solo entrepreneurs to exploit, they’re for megacorporations. Honestly it’s pretty 19th century to think people in India or Asia will work for us and won’t wise up and support our “lifestyles”. It’s a pipe dream. A good developer in India or Asia knows his worth.
I’m sure some people can pull off this lifestyle, but it’s snake oil to suggest this is even remotely turnkey, approachable to anyone. You have to be the motherfucking man, the boss of bosses, to make this work for you. You have to be great on the phone, charming, intelligent, creative, visionary even. So what I totally don’t understand is why such a person who could pull this off would simultaneously lack ambition and interest to grow their business further, because the kind of person who can actually execute this sort of thing would not look for work life balance, they would continue kicking ass and taking names in the global market for the sheer fun of making more and more money and being awesome.
That’s why I think all of this is a scam targeted at tired people. If a person wants work life balance they should find a decent job.
I think what has evolved out of the book, especially as connectivity has gotten better across the world, is the 'digital nomad' jobs you see. People working remotely at US wages while living in Chiang Mai or Medellin and using the value of the US dollar to really extend their visits. Retiree expats were already doing it and now people can actually do that while of working age.
The ones that fall into a snake oil or other sort of category are the folks that are funding these trips via selling you e-books about how you can do the same thing. It has an MLM feel about it. I also, as someone that has lived and traveled abroad for long periods of time, wonder about burnout. Some people can keep up that life for a while but it can get pretty tiresome.
As to creating 'turnkey' businesses...I have a friend whose wife works at a startup that they've "built to sale" aka the pipe dream of growing fast and trying to cash out in x number of years as if they were flipping a house vs building a viable business that someone would actually want to acquire (or that makes money). It relies mainly on overseas programmers to build it and, given the very little amount of cash I know they have, I doubt they're of the highest or most consistent quality.
Tim Ferriss isn't the only one selling the snake oil. SV does a pretty good job itself, as we know from hanging out on HN.
Edit: Also, you sparked an interesting discussion & reached the front page of HN, so that’s pretty cool!
As an engineer who gets approached to build other people's ideas regularly, I find this trait to be true.
It was intentional as you note. Calling it the 25 hour work week, wouldn't have sold very well, and would have attracted less of the shortcut crowd. He deserves appropriate criticism for the pandering, intentionally seeking to sell to that audience, with a fraudulent setup premise; the shortcut followers are his created monster.
In the old days, people devoted their careers to a company and companies looked out for people. Continuous layoff cycles were rare and long-timers earned pensions. These days there are layoffs in good times and bad. Sometimes layoffs hit entire divisions and even top rated people are let go.
Why the heck would i trust some traditional system and not try to find shortcuts?
Really? I've been hearing that lament regularly for the last 35 years.
He tells this explicitly at the beginning of the book. He tried several names using dummy adverts to gauge click through rates and chose what generated most.
I think the book is honest and comes clean on it's intended goal. It's written in the classic marketing buff style of TV shops worldwide. If one takes it seriously in all of it's claims then that's not really the authors problem.
I agree the followers and not the source is the problem.
Hm. Yea. How about you just pay me?
I had a friend that tried to take advantage of me that way. Last time I heard he worked as a software tester at a clothing company, but he had made attempts at managing people. To a certain degree, I used to be like that, except I never explicitly tried managing people, only posted ideas on forums. These days I'm a determined programmer. If you're one of those people who love posting on "Ideas" subforums, I have sympathy for you, but programmers, animators, sound designers etc also have ideas, and can make more things happen.
As a co-founder/technical person, I immensely enjoy what I do. Frankly, I'll get bored pretty quickly sitting at the beach and staring at the ocean. It's fun and relaxing, but I kinda "get the point" after some time. Whereas, there are endless challenges to keep me motivated, curious, and ultimately satisfied "at work".
It was more or less the same satisfaction and fulfillment I had as an employee. I just enjoyed the challenges and still got compensated generously back then.
Disclaimer: I didn't read the book. I'm sure it has some great points or it won't resonate with so many people. Also I should mention that at our company we instated a 45-days holidays per year policy (this includes personal and public holidays, we're 100% remote, no VC, but no dreams of mega money). So we do see a lot of value in not working to death.
We spend so much of our lives working just to be able to feed and house ourselves. There are so many things we could do with our lives if we didn't have to, and lying on the beach is only one of thousands.
you'll never get there working 4 hours a week. And you'll never do 4 hours a week if you are passionate about your job, or a rat racer.
src: his book the 4 hours work week
It's based on the assumption that work is something inherently unpleasant, and therefore it needs to be reduced, ideally to 0. Aside from ethical implications of this parasitic lifestyle (it's how to abuse the capitalist system, not how to fix it), to me it smells of solving the wrong problem.
I think Robert Kiyosaki and possibly Tim Ferris (I haven't read books of the latter) simply haven't discovered what they enjoy doing in life... or are encouraging others NOT to get to know themselves. What their abilities are. It's not true that what you love will always be your best job. For example professional gamers earn little, because playing games is enjoyable in itself. Game developers put up with higher than usual workplace exploitation, because they work on something quite fun. Models put up with abuse, because being a model is glamorous. So unless you're lucky with a passion in something that's quite unique AND profitable, the trick is finding a pragmatic interest, which is enjoyable but not to the point where managers feel they can take advantage of you or competition is very fierce. Oh, and reasonably well paid.
"Find a job you like, and you'll never work a single day of your life" - Confucius "If you love something, you shouldn't do it for money." - Unknown(?)
I used to think the 2 are mutually exclusive. They are NOT. If you care about your profession too much, it puts you at risk. You might try to make a PERFECT product and never ship. You might get in arguments with people how something must look. You might agree to poor work conditions or bad pay.
Neither of them suggest a goal to eventually quit working. They might say stuff like "never have to work again" for marketing purposes, but the key there is the choice to be able to decide whether to work or not, and on what.
They're both advocating a level of financial independence where you can pick and choose the work and do what you want to do rather than grinding at a job that's not particularly interesting to you just to pay the bills.
But for code, "craftsmanship" is problematic. Not just that it changes so quickly (compared with traditional crafts), that ideal skills don't have time to be defined, let alone mastered.
This is caused by the malleable, abstract thought-stuff of code, and it occurs even within the work of the individual coder: as soon as you master something, it should be abstracted into a library or framework - a product. This puts the coder at a higher level, which is a different level, and therefore not yet mastered. Such factoring opportunities are far rarer in traditional, physical crafts.
Productization obsoletes craftsmanship.
Of course, not every task is sufficiently self-contained to be usefully factored out - instead, the code itself is pretty much the best "abstraction" you can do. But can these ad hoc tasks really be mastered either?
> ‘I didn’t know how to do x, so I just had to figure it out.’ This is what I regularly hear from successful founders, whereas ‘I couldn’t find someone to do X, so I had to reconsider whether to pursue it at all’ is a common refrain from unsuccessful founders.
Grit, resourcefulness, improvisation - great! But "figuring it out" is much closer to hacking a solution than achieving craftsmanship-like mastery...
You can also turn this around: Maybe software craftsmanship is not about writing great code (for the reasons you mentioned; the article also doesn't phrase it that way), but about skillfully using existing tools. Peek into the open source libraries you use, disassemble the closed-source ones, take your time to really understand that occasional bug.
There are many tools that rarely change (extreme examples: Unix, RDBMS, programming languages), and grokking them is not something that can be productized. Yet I see few people/businesses making that investment; it's easier in the short term to treat everything as a black box and add more abstraction glue, and that's what I see many people/businesses do.
Still seems more like a journey man or handyman than craftsmanship, but maybe that's not fair of me.
I agree there is deep craft in understanding tools. Hmmm, maybe developing/maintaining those enduring tools is even closer to craftsmanship? Unfortunately, enduring codebases get worse over time by conglomeration! The antithesis of craftsmanship. People who have written the same kind of enduring tool several times (from scratch) would probably be the epitome of software craftsmanship. e.g. plan 9 and go.
But, gluing black-boxes is more productive.
"... your way your way...", "... just a by standard...", improper uses of "then", "this tasks" etc... all distract from the thesis.
He's also stated in a blog post that he chose the title for the book based on market testing. It's far more of an indictment on society than it is on him that people take the spirit of his book wrong.
Huge mental shift.
Whereas most hackers I think view success as “changing the world for the better directly via the production of software or electronics”.
An enterprise is more than what it produces and therefore an enterpreneur also needs to be more. Not more in the sense of "higher level" but more in the sense of multi-tasking. Scale out, not scale up.
And being mediocre in each area is actually quite okay if one therefore is able to understand which area is currently the most important. If you have an exceptional product but nobody buys it, the hype building part is very well the most important area at that time, as an example.
So yes, craftmanship is important. It will make you produce great things, and the production of these things may make you a success as entrepreneur. But it's by far not to be singled out as The Major Factor.
There is nothing unique about running a startup, it's another business, but, as of today, with great expectations and generally more money and higher risk of quick failure than a mainstream business.
I personally don't care what X is, I care about variation. I chafe under a steady X hours a week schedule. I'd rather go hard for a season, take a huge break, then go back to working 50-80 hours a week. Is anyone else like this?
I'm all for craftsmanship for the sake of it, but this statement is naive.
You need craftsmanship for some type of businesses. For the rest, you do not. I have seen way too many people become successful financially with spaghetti, and even more who never got off the ground because they felt honing their craft would bring in more money.
If you're trying to run a business, be as good as you need to be. I suspect many/most businesses will not benefit from becoming a master.
"Ideas are just a multiplier of execution," --- https://sivers.org/multiply
Jay Acunzo has a really good podcast about this subject: Unthinkable.fm. It’s focused on not embracing the hacks-culture and instead focusing on the craft. It’s texhnically a podcast about marketing, but a lot of what he talks about applies to other disciplines too. Most of the interviews are super interesting too.
It is usually meant to work 4 hours for others (client/employer), i.e. what you get paid for. And you spend the rest of the time honing your existing skills, acquiring new skills, etc... among other things.
Anyway, I've re-written most sections of my app 5-10 times. I'm re-writing much of the 50k lines right now (I'm adding in redux + immutable, but also refactoring lots and cleaning up lots).
At this point, I'm fairly convinced you can't pay people to make an app like I'm making(to the same quality). I'm also fairly convinced if I was on a team, it wouldn't have worked either. Let me explain why...
Re-writing the same stuff to get better code, to help enable things to work a different way, this feels bad, like wasted work, but it moves the project forward. It feels bad even though I'm re-writing my own code. If I was on a team, I think there would be more negativity around it.
If I was paid to do something, I would focus my time on adding features, but not really on refactoring. I'd do enough to show results, but I'd paint myself into a corner, at which point development would slow down. It would be hard to get 'cleanup' projects approved. Management wouldn't understand.
So, back to general stuff on being a craftsman.. something I've been going through was this constant sensation that "launch is coming", "launching next month!", but it was always in the distance.
For a whole year, it felt like I'd launch was one month away.
I think the lesson I was supposed to learn from this, was that I need to be hungry for the work I'm doing. The work is the reward, learning to enjoy the process.
The work is my food, and I'm learning to be hungry.
Loving the work, getting to the point where if I'm allowed to work on it, I've won, that's craftsmanship to me. Steve Wozniak is my hero in this sense. He loved the work, he loved "getting close" to the work and the code. He encouraged going over sections you already knew were pretty spiffy, just to get that much closer to the code.
Anyway, I think all the "work less" movement is because people haven't actually found work they actually like. I make animation software, and it's been a hard school to learn to like it, which you would think would be easy.
When the definition of anything changes to "work", it almost innately becomes harder to enjoy. I think the real lesson of the next decade is learning to enjoy work, especially when it becomes very difficult and harder to enjoy. To enjoy the unenjoyable is perhaps a secret to living.
When I release my software, I want to be standing beside it straight and tall, beaming at the craftsmanship. Part of me hates sales, and in a way, it goes with the craftsmanship part, knowing that only a truly great product is worth selling, and that product does much of the selling itself, after the initial people have used it.
I hate dealing with the business part (ads, billing, etc), but moderately spoiling the app with ads and in-apps allows me not to be distracted earning money. Staying hungry just means taking freelance gigs for me.
Overall, adding new complex features turned out to be orthogonal to monetization efficiency, but I continued to implement them. Two years ago I discovered a tiny obscured fan community of the app and helped them grow. Since then the most enjoyable part of my work is interacting with some of the dedicated users and discovering the new ways of using content they create.
They cannot pay me, but the I am proud of making a great product for them. The code is shit to be honest, but does it matter?
a line from the poem, "no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly"
We have swapped real value for fake artifice in too many ways in our economy...
Do more, work less.
Who determines the should part of that?
The outside observer that claims they can build an Uber clone in a weekend? (an intentionally absurd example, although not uncommon either)
Or the builder. And if it's the actual builder-owner, who else is there to specify to them, how long their building & craftsmanship should take? I say: nobody; period.
I'll take the old id Software mantra: it'll be done when it's done. It's glorious in its go fuck yourself attitude toward artificially pressurized deadlines.
Or Shigeru Miyamoto: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Although I might change it to: a delayed game may eventually be good, but a rushed game is forever bad. The spirit of it is correct.
Exactly. The builder will know when they’re being effective and when they’re just fucking around.
Deep down we all know even if we sometimes don’t want to admit it.
And a great game never finished because it ran out of budget or time or the builder got distracted by a shiny new project is just that, a game never finished.
I think there are a lot of individuals that preach things like the 4HWW when trying to achieve a wealthy lifestyle with little or no work, but the author is just taking advantage of that.
Work smarter not harder, and it doesnt make you a craftsman by working slower or over longer periods, its about optimizing your time and being as effective as possible. Much of a typical 40hr work week is wasted time.