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Working Smarter Is Not A Sign Of Laziness
As a productivity consultant to small business owners and managers, I am sometimes looked at as if I were promoting laziness and slothful behavior when I help them find ways to have more free time.
As a productivity consultant to small business owners and managers, I am sometimes looked at as if I were promoting laziness and slothful behavior when I help them find ways to have more free time.
Seeking to have more free time doesn’t make a person lazy. It might, however, be a sign that the person is smarter than average. Smart enough to separate from the mentality of the herd and think for him or herself. The herd mentality is what causes us to work harder and longer in order to make a living and supply our family’s needs.
Can you name a true fact that indicates that working hard and long is an accurate measure of a person’s attitude?
What is the basis for which most of us get paid? Is it not our production? Therefore, my consultations focus on helping a person produce more in less time, enabling him or her to earn his pay for the required production, just as surely as the person who works longer to achieve the same level of productivity.
I would like to suggest that the person who produces more in less time is definitely not lazy. He or she is, in fact, more productive, smarter and not as lazy than his or her counterpart who just eases along all day to produce requirements that can be done in much less time.
Another consideration, as we compare working more for equal or less results, is to note that all the extra time spent working, or just being present, making excuses to yourself and avoiding the work, until there is no other choice, is that this excess busy-ness reduces creativity. Working just to fill time is also unnecessarily stressful, a waster of time and restricts creativity because it is unbalanced.
Look all around you and within yourself and you will observe that life is basically cyclical. There are cycles of work, rest and recreational activities. All are necessary for happiness and fulfillment. If you work all the time, you become ineffective and counter-productive. If you rest all the time, you’re sure to become a lazy sluggard and if you play all the time you will likely become bored and disdain your excessive hedonism. The obvious evidence clearly shows a balance in life.
After the requirements of our work are accomplished quickly and effectively, we then are able to claim some time for relaxing activities, and it is during these periods of relaxation, when doing things we enjoy that we are most likely to be inspired to creative action. This may lead us to invent something, or to paint or photograph a really gorgeous picture, write a song, enjoy our family more, etc. This non work time is more likely to make us creative and make a greater contribution to our work or to society.
Let me be quick to state that when it is actually necessary to work longer hours, it must be done, but, once again, our value, our pay and our perks are, in the final analysis, based on our production, not just the time we hang around the workplace. Think of your dentist. Would you want his pay to depend on how long and hard he worked on your teeth? Wouldn’t you rather he finished quickly and effectively? Or would you tell him he needs to work longer and harder for the amount of his fee?
We need to reject the idea that working less is indicative of laziness, unless, of course, the person under consideration is shirking his overall responsibility. Remember that we all work for incentives. That’s basic economics. If there were no profit, the businessperson would not operate a business and if there were not a favorable combination of life needs provided, the businessperson wouldn’t be able to find people to work and make it possible for him to produce more and make more profit.
When we realize that people work for incentives and do other things for fun, it begins to make sense to reward those, including yourself, who produce more in less time with more benefit, such as extra time off, without a reduction in pay. Doesn’t that make good business sense? I pose this question assuming that you want a work force of cheerful, motivated people. If we only produce more only to enable us to work longer and harder to produce more with the time saved, we lose our balance and get back into the vicious cycle that may lead us to join 26% of American workers who have had or are about to have a nervous breakdown.