T/F: Nobody Cares How Hard You Work

Is it true that nobody cares how hard you work and the only thing that matters is results? That is what Oliver Burkeman argues in his popular recent piece on 99u:

Call it the “Effort Trap:” it’s dangerously easy to feel as though a 10-hour day spent plowing through your inbox, or catching up on calls, was much more worthwhile than two hours spent in deep concentration on hard thinking, followed by a leisurely afternoon off. Yet any writer, designer or web developer will tell you it’s the two focused hours that pay most — both in terms of money and fulfillment. (In Mason Currey’s 2013 book Daily Rituals, a compendium of artists’ and authors’ work routines, almost nobody reports spending more than four or five hours a day on their primary creative tasks.) Indeed, meaningful work doesn’t always lead to exhaustion at all: a few hours of absorption in it can be actively energizing — so if you’re judging your output by your tiredness, you’re sure to be misled.

That, I believe, is indisputably true. Burkeman blames Calvinism and the “Protestant Work Ethic” for our mistaken idea that we must crunch ourselves like dry, brittle leaves on a sidewalk, that nothing has been done until we are exhausted by the doing of it.

Parents and teachers alike communicate to us from the time that we are children that we must Try Our Best, and it’s easy to interpret that to mean Work Our Hardest. Burkeman even gets a dig in at GTDers like our Nicole:

Numerous approaches to productivity — even the best ones, like David Allen’s Getting Things Done — encourage a “cross-it-off-the-list” mindset: They’re so preoccupied with clarifying and keeping track of your to-dos, you forget to ask if they’re the right tasks to begin with.

Focus on results instead, he advises. On efficiency, on output. The trouble is, how many bosses do you know who agree with him? Burkeman asserts that “a really good boss” wouldn’t mind if you left the office at 3:00, provided you’d done everything you needed to beforehand and done it well.

Listen, I’d love a supervisor like that, and, for that matter, a job like that. I’d also love a bright blue Vespa and a driveway to put it in. American gigs are all about face-time, about being in a particular place and looking busy. Granted, that’s beginning to change (whee!!), but for now, employees are still largely expected to be on-site, available for everything from impromptu meetings to idle chitchat. They’re still judged by that metric, too, which is why parents who request flextime or alternate schedules are so often penalized.

Maybe employees play a part in furthering this absurdity, but the tone is set at the top. The people who really need to be convinced that working sweatily is not as important as working well are the managers — and they’re working as sweatily as anyone to justify their often exorbitant salaries.

A better, more accurate title for this piece would be, “No One SHOULD Care How Hard You Work.” That I would agree with wholeheartedly. Please wake me up when we live in that world. I hope it comes with Vespas.

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