Let’s talk about work
I’m currently reading the classic book Working by Studs Turkel (the first book in our agency book club. Hey! Why not start an agency book club?). It’s a series of testimonials from people about their different jobs and the nature of work in general. The first chapter has this quote from a steelworker:
“You’re doing this manual labour and you know that technology can do it. (Laughs). Let’s face it, a machine can do the work of a man; otherwise they wouldn’t have space probes. Why can we send a rocket ship that’s unmanned and yet send a man into a steel mill to do a mule’s work?”
I also read this interview with US comedian Aziz Ansari where he extolled the benefits of not working super-hard:
“I waste an hour or two every day looking at mindless stuff on the Internet. I go down a wormhole from Google News or The New York Times. I’ll watch movie trailers and stuff like that. It’s like, ‘A 15-second video on Instagram of a guy with a light saber! Look at that!’ But I wrote a bit about that, so it did help in that way.”
An hour later I came across this article in US GQ, which explored the jobs which earned the most money for the least effort:
“For many people, work means late nights in the office and even later emails from your boss. A Gallup poll from last year that the average full-time American employee works 47 hours a week, with 18 percent of them working at least 60 hours. Eighty percent of American workers report feeling stressed out at work, according to a Nielsen study from last year. (Wage growth, in case you were wondering, has pretty much been stagnant since 1979).”
And then this article about pointless long hours in NY Magazine:
“This is a version of something psychologists call the “labor illusion,” which, as Burkeman explains, means that although “we might say we’re focused only on whether [someone] did the job quickly and well … really we want to feel they wore themselves out for us.”
Then a friend of mine posted this quote to Facebook:
This Daily Mash article: ‘Business goes under as entire staff masters art of looking busy’.
So what is ‘work’ in 2015?
What does your day look like? How much of it is Facebook/Twitter/Blogs and how much is actual application to the tasks in hand?
Do you justify Facebook etc. as sponging stuff into your brain so you can be more creative in future?
Or do you give zero fucks?
Is your output a reasonable return for the money you get paid?
Do you enjoy what you do despite the fact that it’s tainted with the pejorative nomenclature ‘work’?
Are we conditioned to dislike working because it’s drummed into us at school to be some kind of ‘necessary’ drudgery that needs to be completed before we enjoy ourselves, like eating your greens before you’re allowed pudding?
Are white collar jobs a bit pathetic compared to the real work of digging roads etc?
Is manual labour basically a stress-free, thoughtless mental holiday that’s far more appealing than pushing a pen (if only it paid more)? (By the way, when my wife worked at a production company she told me that the boss often fantasised about working on a checkout, mindlessly passing barcodes over the electronic reader.)
Is it true, as Churchill said, that if you find a job you like you’ll never work a day in your life?
Do you suspect that there’s really only enough proper work for, say, 500m of us, with the rest doing silly made-up jobs that don’t matter in the least?
I wonder how many hours of actual ‘work’ I do each day. I answer emails, have quite a few meetings and reviews, get on calls with far-flung countries, think about what I could do to make the workplace better in general etc., but how many minutes do I spend doing that? How many is it possible to spend utterly dedicated to those tasks? I like to pop over to Facebook or Twitter occasionally to give my brain a rest and/or find those fascinating little tidbits you all enjoy in my weekend posts, but I don’t really switch off as I continue to think about aspects of the job throughout the day and at at home.
My job spans many time zones, so there’s always someone awake to prod me with an electronic message.I usually wake up to 40 emails and estimate that I receive another couple of hundred throughout the day. I can often go the loo with all messages cleared and return to find a little number 17 in my unanswered mails indicator. But lots of these just have me looped into a conversation between other people. If I had to give a considered response to each one I don’t think I’d have time to do anything else.
However, when I get to the weekend I tend to switch off. The kids are around and they need my attention (and I want to give it to them). I think that’s valuable time and I rarely feel like there’s something else my brain should be occupied with.
I also suppose that there are people in the office who spend more of their hours contributing to the agency than I do, but there are also plenty who spend fewer. But what is the quality of those hours? Is one of mine equivalent to three of a more junior person? Or equivalent to half an hour of my boss’s time? And, as I ultimately contribute to Apple, does my work generate more money than those who work for smaller companies?
In the end it’s just another area of life that human beings guess at with little accuracy. We fit vaguely into out little slots and that seems to be sufficient for the whole situation to continue.
Then we die, and just before that happens we realise that none of it actually mattered at all (smiley face made out of punctuation, perhaps with a wink and a sticky-out tongue).
Best not to think about these things.
I’ve been thinking about – and struggling with – these issues recently. I tend to leave my office at 6 most nights, knackered from 9 hours of juggling the demands of account peons, clients, junior teams, ECDs etc etc and trying, desperately to have a creative idea or two. I’ll take some work home 3 nights out of 5, usually a little writing or some work to review. Does that mean I don’t work hard enough or that I’m justifiably earning my (very decent) salary? Does it matter as much as being *seen* to do a good job by those who perform my assessments? Where do our own notions of ‘working hard’ and the notional label of ‘valuable employee’ meet?
Fucked if I know.
If you die thinking none of your life – work, social, family – mattered, you will die very sad and might as well top yourself now.
As the movie It’s a Wonderful Life argued, we all matter as long as we have been interacting with people, and we all do that. We make A difference to friends, loved ones, workmates and even bosses.
As far as work is concerned, you have demonstrated very well how difficult it is to judge whether you are working efficiently, never mind to your capacity. Manual work is gradually bring replaced, which is creating a growing pool of the unemployable who do not have the wit or intelligence to do non-manual work. That is a challenge for governments which should concern us all.
But for those lucky enough to have sustainable jobs, I reckon you can only judge your effectiveness by the goals you and your bosses set you. You will only stretch yourself to your full potential if you continually aim beyond your reach – not unrealistically, but enough to keep bringing out the best. And no, I would not measured that by the number of emails answered!
But there is nothing wrong in not working or playing to your full potential, just doing enough to get by, if that’s what you want to settle for. We are not all driven and we don’t all enjoy being stressed. You can still live a worthwhile life that matters.
I was really only talking about work ‘mattering’. I think for most people the significance of what is produced in a working day is ultimately non-existent.
Families and all that? Well, that’s what you make it.
I’m a freelance CD/CW.
I have massive clusters of hard work. tend to go 4-6 weeks in hyper throttle (14+ hrs/day). with only one rule: to have my family time from 4-8 p.m. (at 8 p.m. I start working again). no emails, phone calls, “urgent” meetings” etc. don’t be misled – it took a hard lesson to achieve this, some funny looks of disbelief and even some ridicule.
than I consciously fuck off every brief that comes along to read, do silly stuff, browse internets, bonk my wife, keep up with latest news for a week or two. again only one rule: never reset with advertising news & NEVER go through award winners.
some findings:
1. “urgent” is rarely reeeeeeally urgent. most of the time it’s just someone deducing it’s better to call me than to do the thinking by him/herself. when I don’t pick-up things “miracously” get solved.
2. if it could wait till 7 p.m. it can wait till 8 a.m.
3. freelance is all about bursts of energy. nobody calls a freelancer with 2 weeks to deadline. we’re talking hours here. so you can’t survive unless you take a load-off. the best people in the agencies/clients I work with understand this and give me that time. they tend to see it as a sort of an investment, if you know what I mean. these are the ones I’d go extra mile for.
4. most important: there’s always enough money. and I mean it – always. ironically, when I’m back in “working mode” clients are prepared to pay me more as if I was available all the time. I raised my fee 2 years ago to cut on the work but all agreed to pay more. helpful tip for negotiating: never go for a round number (anything that has a 0 or 5 at the end). they all think you’re just saying what just popped in your mind, so they bargain.
do I work hard enough? sure.
could I do more? sure.
would it be worth it? financially yes, but when would I have the time to spend it? 2 weeks in July? sorry, no go.
What a brilliant article. The Richard Buckminster Fuller quote makes me think about work in a way I’ve never imagined. I love that he’s highlighted this weird notion we have that we need to justify our right to exist, especially in light that wages are stagnant, and shit, for most people. The idea of ‘working hard’ creates solid social control though, I imagine governments would be terrified to change it. As ‘working hard’ controls both the time of the masses and their notions of how the world should be.
I read “How to be Idle” by Tim Someone. Changed my life.