It’s about not being there…
These days it seems most people are looking for a shortcut, that product or service they can buy that will make it so they don’t have to work and be the next big celebrity. The fallout from this sort of pie in the sky dreaming of your big break being just around the corner is that you allow yourself to fall into a trap of inefficiency. You tell yourself “If I only work a few more hours this week I can pay enough off my credit card so I can buy this new designer product” How is working hard inefficient? Most of the time it’s not, but when your always looking for a shortcut longer hours aren’t always productive hours plus it’s made worse when your not passionate about what you are doing. Now some jobs are all about hanging around waiting for something to happen but office work is not. Everyone has that person in there office who spends more time telling everyone how much work they have to do and how much of there personal life they have to give up for the good of the company than time actually working. This very same person will also be the one who wishes they could afford this or that object. I’ve even seen this person given the opportunity to shift their work schedule and have more of that personal time they said they so desperately needed, guess what happened? Thats right they fought it because what they saw was not a way to become more efficient but a loss of overtime pay. As a member of the marketing machine I feel as though we have done a disservice to the workforce of our country. We produce the dreams that everyone is bombarded with everywhere, we tell them buy this and you too will be one of the beautiful people. The Media is telling us that there is a shortcut to riches and we can find it if we just spend more. The big secret though is you don’t have to work endless hours and have huge mountains of debt to have a comfortable life. The other part of this secret is, yes you do have to work hard, there is no magic piece of software of gadget that’ll do the hard bits for you. But working hard doe not correlate to working long hours, sure you may have the occasion when you need that 60 hour week but it’s the exception not the rule. Also it’s not about big paychecks, it’s about how you manage the resources you have access too. Of course all this stuff is easier when your an entrepreneur and not working for the man. Managers who think anything other than you chained to your desk 40+ hours a week are rare but when your calling the shots and decided that today is the day your going to work from the local coffee shop who is going to tell you no?
Organizing your workday based on tasks instead of time is a huge part in living a better personal life. Life at least to me is about celebrating your victories, doubly so on the small ones. When your workday is task based it’s so easy to say “I got that project done so tonight I’m going to celebrate by grilling a steak and opening that bottle of wine I bought last week for a special occasion”. When your office is time based, well every evening is “whew! I made it through another day, let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t suck as bad”. It can make all the difference between how successful you feel which in turn actually helps you be more successful and we all know people like to be on the winning team and when your winning you work better so you’ll keep winning. The second part of the puzzle is to not run off promising things to your customers that even under optimal conditions would be difficult. Yes you want to be the hero and deliver what everyone said can’t be done, but you need to honestly accept your limitations. The surefire way to destroy your productivity is if your spending all your time cleaning up the mess because you could not make a deadline or shipped a shoddy product. All too often making a promise that wasn’t followed through on is the biggest killer in a company I’ve seen it first hand damage customer confidence which then destroyed employee morale and with it productivity. When your task based it becomes easier to know what you can do and allows you to set realistic goals and deliver the quality product your customers want.
It’s a hard sell but the accepted practice of working a 40 hour work week is a bad idea. Even harder is selling the point that letting employees set their own hours gets better results and makes for a happier employee. When I have to punch the time clock, I lose incentive to work on problems after 5 because of the delineation between “my time” and “company time” I’ve found that if one can do their work anywhere and are allowed to do so they will complete more tasks than if they are coming into the office everyday. It’s where things need to go if people want to have happy full lives.
