Working hard for the sake of working hard is laziness
lifestyleupdated.com
lifestyleupdated.com
Sure, we can all aspire to living the 4-hour work week but not everyone is Tim Ferriss and not everyone can or should live on selling digital products online either. Software needs to be written, products have to be designed and produced.
The question is: Why are these things measured in hours wasted during their creation instead of the actual business value that's been generated?
Why do we measure the work of a freelance software developer in terms of hourly payments instead of the value she creates? Of all things creating software should be measured by something else than the hours wasted during the process. Measuring output this way certainly is the easy way out. It provides some well-known and commonly shared standard.
However, it also promotes lazy thinking. In this kind of framework the programmer who develops software by using anti-patterns copiously is rewarded because he makes sure he can waste even more hours on maintaining this software in order to get paid even more. Basically, in this mindset writing maintainable software is as valuable as copying and pasting 'System.out.println("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.)"' all day.
The problem with software in particular is of course that buying and selling software this way is not only well-established but it's also difficult to measure the business value beforehand.
Nevertheless, while I certainly haven't found a real solution to this problem I keep thinking there has to be a better way of measuring the value of work. Any thoughts?
Every freelancer who has found a way to explain why maintainable software is better, and why less code is better than more code, and why they spend less time than other person X, has thus also found a way to increase their rate by a handsome factor.
Unfortunately this is only possible for entrepreneurs. In a traditional employment situation your rate is defined by other people. They do define it as a business value (Google engineer makes more money than a government engineer), but they present it to their employees as a rate-per-time because that makes them easier to manage and more interchangeable.
Point is, at the end of the day, your pay is always judged based on the value you provide, not the time you put in.
This holds true in most things. Quality is really hard to measure. It is much easier to say 'well, our start-up worked 15 hours per day, who could blame us for failing?'
It is a particularly American mindset that hard work is the only thing that matters. In the valley, you'll hear people say all the time that execution is the only thing that matters. It sounds great because it superficially appears measurable.
Unfortunately, you can spend a long time executing well on a dumb idea. Color is an example off the top of my head. Beautiful application, worked really well, but ultimately sharing images with the people that happen to be around you isn't something the people want.
So they make fun. They passively bring down your efforts. They're much too nice to do it actively. And provide plenty of excuses for you to fall off the wagon.
BUT!
This is also a test of your resolve. If you can't do something against your friends' and family's will, how do you know you actually want to do it?
At least that's how I look at it. If I'm not confident enough in my choices that they would stand up to the scrutiny of my friends and family, then my choices need some more polish.
Or it could be that they've seen the same song & dance before, and remember how it turned out.
Am I the only one who thinks this is very selfish and primitive attitude? I like to think that I want to live not as an animal, for the sake of eating, sleeping and procreation. That I need to force myself to go beyond living for the sake of living and live for the sake of great ideas. I want to work on great things that contribute to progress and I care about that more than myself.
However, the distinction is that whatever you are working on RIGHT NOW is not what's all important. You may and should love what you're doing right now, but attaching too much of your identity to your current product/role/company will cause you pain if the product/company fails, or prevent you from taking opportunities elsewhere where you can contribute to your overall goals more than where you currently are.
He also says "learn languages, play music instrument, do sports", but these actually require work and overcoming yourself, and are synergistic with whatever you do 9-5.
The author is right that working long hours for an employer is actually an intellectually lazy way to live. However this doesn't make hard work, effort or high-standards in themselves wrong at all. This is also a lazy attitude.
1. Make sure what you're working on is really a great thing that contributes to progress (e.g. not another junk social media "app").
2. If what you're doing really matters, all the more important to stick to a disciplined 30-40 hour working week to retain your ability to think clearly, instead of slopping into overtime and destroying your judgment.
3. Raising a family is the most important job of all (in a real sense it's the supergoal of which everything else we do is just a subgoal).
I don't think this is the case at all, and its major point that a lot of philosophy/lifestyle/newage/whatever gurus miss out on. The vast majority of people on this planet work to provide for themselves and their families, not to give their lives some sort of existential meaning. I'm so tired of web 2.0 entrepreneurs/serial startup people/bros saying that the way we live our lives today is meaningless, and that only by following their philosophy can we hope to wrangle some sort of meaning from our wretched existence.
I'll say what I've said a bunch of times before. If people in the same position as this author want to effect some actual change in the meaning of work and life and time for a great many people, they need to start speaking with their dollars rather than their words.
The quintessential picture of a couple, lifestyle designing the shit out of their coffee after what was most assuredly an extreme bike ride.
As someone who spent significant time and effort to travel abroad for an extended period, this bothers me. This is how you spend a Saturday, it isn't what 99.5% of the population will be able to achieve (or should try to achieve) for their day to day. Once you begin living without obligation or schedules, you'll find that it is interesting for only so long.
What people should strive for is a balanced life, that affords them flexibility to do the things they want, but also includes the obligations that most of us have. Not everyone can live like Tim Ferris, at least not until machines do all the work for us.
I actually agree with the article's main premiss, work for work's sake is pointless, but to hold up the 4HWW as the pinnacle of this, won't work for most people. So here is my attempt at a list of what will:
- Live close to work (under 30 minutes)
- Save as much as possible
- Do your absolute best at work, then go home
- Embrace things you like to do
- Make time to do them
Your advice is probably better and much more succinct.
Hah! Their faces have a relaxed complexion (no flush or sweat), there isn't a speck of dust or dirt or mud about either them or their mountain bikes... It's either a setup or possibly pre-ride.
2. Never strive for endless perfection
3. Stop associating your life with your work
Who works 9 hours a day to avoid boredom?
I think it doesn't seem as odd as you might think. When people talk about the economy, they talk about putting everyone in jobs, not ensuring everyone is productive. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's an important one. For many people, the metric of a good economy seems to be what fraction of the population work from 9-5, rather than how much people produce.
To be fair, I am stretching the applicability of the original article farther than the author probably intended.
In other words, the classic "work hard / work smart" contrast.
I'd say that we wouldn't even have that 1st world - 3rd world distinction any more - at least not for long - if most people in the 1st world finally stopped being lazy and actually thought about how to contribute meaningful work.
Work for work's sake is what currently holds us back and absorbs more energy than anything else.
The main objective of any mainstream economic policy is to achieve (near) full employment. Not because it makes sense economically but our twisted work ethic learned and internalized over hundreds of years tells us to.
2. Everyone will value their own time now much more, so you will automatically get paid for what you achieve, not for the hours you worked.
3. Or did I get this the wrong way around?
While a Star Trek Earth style system sounds awesome and utopian, I cannot help but thinking most people would just stay home and drink and/or watch Law and Order marathons all day. Hell, that does not sound too bad to me at all, and I love my work.