Instead of trying to Work Less find Work You Can’t Live Without
Published October 20, 2008 by Robbie
Are you familiar with the “Work Less” mantra that has gained popularity in recent years from the people at 37Signals and from books like 4 Hour Work Week? It is the idea that by working fewer hours in a week, you’ll be more productive while you are working. Employees at 37Signals only work 32 hours a week (8 hours x 4 days). They take Friday off because “no real work gets done on a Friday afternoon” according to Jason Fried, 37Signals CEO. I’m a big fan of 37Signals, have read Getting Real, and even attended one of their workshops in Chicago. Likewise, I think 4 Hour Work Week and Tim Ferriss have some interesting ideas. However, on this topic, I don’t agree.
Why does Work Less work for them? Because they don’t love their work. It seems as if “work” is a dirty word. It is something they have to do and therefore want to minimize it as much as possible. Like most people, they work to live, not live to work.
If you love your work, 32 hours a week will not come close to squelching the insatiable desire to do it. Maybe the Work Less people find their lives fulfilling and don’t mind trying to minimize work as much as possible so they can do other stuff, but if not, they should instead try to find work they can’t live without. This idea may sound very odd to some people, but that is only because you’ve come to associate doing “work” as something that is not enjoyable, rewarding or downright fun.
When I was writing books from 2001-2006, I was immersed in it. During that time I liked to say that I wrote books to “become an expert not because I was an expert”. I wrote or co-wrote 10 books in 5 years and edited a dozen others (in addition to my “day-job”). People are often surprised by that fact, but I was completely enamored with writing at the time. There was no better way to learn a topic and I thoroughly enjoyed the book publishing process (warts and all). So much so that I became an editor for a time with O’Reilly and the Pragmatic Bookshelf. But going into my 6th year, I grew tired of it and didn’t think I had much more to contribute.
Now, I’m working on StatSheet.com. It is the most fun I’ve ever had coding going back to 1995. I’ve gone from nothing to a website that has over 1.5 million pages of dynamically generated sports stats covering college and pro football and basketball in a little over a year. And I just released a new site based on that work called StatFix.com.
I couldn’t possibly write the books I did or make as much progress on StatSheet has I have by “working less”. I’ve made as much progress as I have because of the fact that I enjoy “working more”. I “work” 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I work after my day job, late at night, early morning, on weekends, and any free chance I get.
One of my favorite books is On Writing by Stephen King. I’ve listened to it probably a dozen times. He has a similar work ethic. “I write 365 days including Christmas, workaholic dweeb or not.” He said he feels the most unease at moments when he isn’t working on a book at all. That’s what I’m talking about here. When I’m working on something I love, the feeling drags me out of bed early every morning and makes me stay up past midnight just about every night.
For the people that only work 4 days a week or try to minimize your work time as much as possible, what do you do all the other time? I listen to ~25 books a year (I’m a big audiobook fan), I don’t like TV much, do my weekly chores around the house, and I play basketball at the YMCA every chance I get. I have a supportive wife that I’ve known since high school and a 17 month old baby that enjoy immensely, and despite how much I work, I bet I spend more time with them than 90% of men spend with their families (I only go into an office 3 days a week). My wife and I travelled a ton before the baby and don’t have much a desire to do so now.
I’m sure I could fill my time with something else, but fortunately I don’t need to.
This post has been viewed 1,783 times
Save to del.icio.us
|
Digg it
|
Reddit
Robbie, I couldn’t agree more. You’re 100% right on. Like you, I’ve had jobs what I wasn’t fully engaged, and others where I worked on nights and weekends simply because I was having such a fun time that it was 4am before I knew it.
While I agree with much of your post, I think you are overlooking a key issue.
Some businesses or projects cannot gracefully absorb more than a certain amount of work. However, someone might be very excited about that project, and want to think and talk and work on nothing else. This leads to an enormous waste of time, energy, and money.
It has been observed that a project that is behind can be delayed even further by attempting to direct more people and resources at it. ( I think this comes from Brooks’ “The Mythical Man-Month” or one of those books on death-march projects.) There are also businesses can get less efficient if you devote more of your time to them; some successful projects or businesses can even be pushed over the edge into failure by obsessive and well-meaning people.
Knowing when to stop is hard, and requires great discipline. If a project fails and you did not spend every waking hour on it, you or your friends may feel it died due to lack of dedication or some laziness character flaw. It requires a lot of discipline to say, “this idea was implemented well enough that it should have succeeded if it was a good idea, I was wrong.”
That is not to say that you should necessarily spend your newly found time in pure recreation, or even in writing snooty, arrogant blogs about how everyone else works too much. You could work on a different business, or a non-money making project that is still work.
My post was more about the concept of working more, not necessarily overworking on a single project. A late project becomes more delayed when you put more people on it does come from the Mythical Man Month, but I don’t think it applies here necessarily. That’s more of a collective effort, not the effort by a single person.
There is nothing to prevent you from having two projects you “can’t live without” and split your time between them.
I could not disagree more.
“what do you do all the other time?”
Can’t give you the answer on that one . You have to figure that out on your own.
:) Enjoy
There’s only one Robbie Allen, only one Robbie Allen.
ME
Hello Robbie
I strongly disagree with you on this. If this philosophy works for you personally that is fine and I’m happy for you. But as a mass recommendation your view on work is shallow, trite, and probably dangerous.
People only have so much choice over what they love and the economy requires certain jobs in certain numbers. Most people won’t find paying work that they “love” to do 7 days a week. There is not enough “fun” work to go around. People are what they are and most people don’t “love” their jobs. The only way for the economy to provide more “fun” work is a cultural values shift. People advocating shorter works weeks are supporting that with their views, while you are not.
Most people would be much happier working less. So what is the reason that people put up with long work weeks in jobs they don’t love?: Fear and Greed. People fear losing social status (competing with the Joneses…) and desire a bunch of junk. All at the expense of mental health and the environment.
Another important point on this topic: Government and corporate elites want nothing more than to keep people so busy they don’t have time to ponder what sort of job our elites are doing. They actively exploit fear and greed to this end. Working too much has consequences that affect us all. It is the peoples responsibility to hold our leaders accountable which is hard to do when everyone is overworked.
Shorter work weeks are good for most people and that doesn’t imply that they don’t love their work either. I love playing video games, but I don’t want to do it 50+ hours a week.
Much more can be said on this topic. Please keep in mind that not everyone is like you. Balance is good. Less not-fun work is good and something we, in the West, should all be advocating.