Why are you at your desk?
It might seem rather ironic that the guy who has been banging the “your energy is more important than your time” drum almost constantly might admit this, but… well, unless I work really hard to remind myself not to, by default I spend way too much time just sitting at my desk, doing nothing much productive.
I was at a workshop hosted by my friend Dr Jason Fox a few years ago, and he uttered a line which has echoed throughout my brain almost incessantly since:
“Smart people overvalue effort, and undervalue value”.
I'm the son of a couple who followed the baby boomer script almost to the letter - started with nothing, studied hard (and received an almost free education thanks to socialist policies their generation has since dismantled in the name of franking credits, but that’s a topic for another TED talk), started their own business, worked seven days a week, spent less than they earned, yada yada yada.
As with many of my generation, I was raised by those for whom hard work is the axiom upon which ideas of success and prosperity are built. It’s difficult not to be a product of that, despite the fact that we now exist in an era where a lifetime of hard work can generate almost nothing at all, if it’s not accompanied by a multiplier like viral awareness or digital leverage.
Sir Ken Robinson spent a lifetime in the trenches trying to change the course of modern education, and yet all those decades of effort combined probably had less of an impact than the fifteen minutes he spent on the TED stage telling jokes.
Our actions betray our true beliefs - we overvalue effort. We subconsciously tell ourselves that to be a good person we have to sit at a desk all day, and thus we do.
Unfortunately none of those hours count for anything if they don’t contribute to producing something of value. Ironically, in fact, I’d argue much of the time we spend at our desks actually detracts from the production of valuable things because the investment of time comes at great cost to our reserves of energy.
Daniel Vassallo said "Working less than you possibly could is not laziness”, and I totally agree. In fact, if your brain is your greatest asset I would argue that working less than you possibly could is a strategic imperative.