Toward a New Vision of Productivity, Part 6: Staying on the Ball
We are a society of stress junkies. We must be – it’s the only way to explain how we think about and behave with regards to work. This “go go go” attitude, this notion that everything is a competition, that everything is a test of our mastery, that we must strive to excel at everything – these are not the symptoms of a healthy relationship with work!
A lot of productivity literature encourages this unhealthy attitude about work. And a lot seems to discourage it, but is grounded in Western notions of work-as-spiritual-value. It’s practically inescapable in the West –it’s called the Protestant work ethic, but after five centuries of Protestantism, it’s become a dominating theme in Western thought.
Work as a Value
According to Max Weber, the turn-of-the-20th century German sociologist whose book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is one of the great sociological works of all time, Protestant attitudes towards grace, labor, thrift, and sobriety were integral parts of the rise of capitalism as a socio-economic order – and centuries later, they have been internalized throughout the Western world, regardless of religious faith. For Protestants, work was something akin to prayer, and its products were valuable inasmuch as they celebrated God’s grace. Thus the accumulation of wealth was also the glorification of God, and wealth that did work – that is, capital – was doubly sacred. (This might seem odd to us today, but as recently as the mid-20th century missionaries at Indian schools were teaching that “property and wealth are signs of God’s approval”; see Mary Crow-Dog’s Lakota Woman).
Now, I’m not at all saying there’s anything wrong with work as a means to reach our goals. Where we go wrong, though, is in finding in work for work’s sake a sense of meaning, accomplishment, and ultimately of self. Our culture is littered with phrases like “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground” and Thomas Jefferson’s admonition that “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it” that suggest that work is a value in and of itself.
In the workforce, the elevation of work to the level of sacred calling manifests as a constant pressure to keep busy – or at least appear to keep busy, which is a particularly grueling kind of work. I remember slow nights at a video store I worked at in college, when my manager – a Marine sergeant in his non-video store life – would exclaim “If you can lean, you can clean.” True enough, I suppose, but cleaning for the sake of looking busy never struck me as all that meaningful – especially as the cleaning demands of a smallish video store with a fairly efficient staff were never all that great.
More problematic, though, is the way that this attitude towards work spills over into our leisure time – when we allow ourselves leisure time. Studies of US workers a few years ago showed that 35% of American workers do not take all or any of their vacation time each year (along with almost 60% of executives) adding up to 415 million unused vacation days in 2003. Work pressures, such as too much work or employees feeling disloyal if they take time away from their jobs, are the main reason given, but for many, it’s simply an inability to fill the time. If we’re not working, we wonder, then who are we?
Stress and Selves
There are a lot of explanations for stress, and I’m sure there are numerous and wildly various sources of stress in any individual’s life. But if I had to nail it down in one general statement, I’d say that stress emerges when a person’s work becomes out of line with their life. We rarely feel stressed out when we’re deep in the flow of a satisfying task (or if we do, it’s what psychologists call “eustress”, positive stress that leads to greater focus and motivation). But when we do work for reasons that do not relate to our own self-actualization (to borrow another term from psychology), stress emerges. Whether its work we do just for the money, or just to look busy, or because our job is on the line if we mess up, or because a dominating supervisor or manager is riding us, or for whatever reason, work under externally-imposed conditions seems to be the biggest source of stress.
So the question is, how do we bring our work in line with our inner, authentic self – and how do we cut out the work that isn’t? I don’t claim to know the answer, but I do know that to start with, we need to have some sense of what that inner self looks like – and in our society where work for work’s sake is celebrated as a primary source of meaningfulness, we have remarkably underdeveloped psychic tools for self-reflection. Self-reflection, in fact, feels a little too much like not working for us to be very comfortable with it, let alone for us to be any good at it.
But it’s something we have to grapple with as part of a new vision of productivity, because being efficient at work that a) leaves us too stressed to enjoy our lives (or even to live them – stress not only kills, it maims), and b) creates open time that we desperately fill with even more work, is not being productive in any meaningful sense.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
YiYi says on January 6th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I don’t quite agree with the article. 1. I don’t think many stay at work simply because they are lack of the ability to fill the free time. People keep doing what works. At some level working hard brings them more satisfaction (might be short-termed) than other things. 2. I don’t agree “when we do work for reasons that do not relate to our own self-actualization (to borrow another term from psychology), stress emerges.” The difference between “stress” and “eustress” is in the degree of the pressure, not the cause.
Garth says on January 6th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Dustin, I have found these articles great! Thank you for your insight and grasp of the “macro”. I can’t wait for the rest.
I, personally, have taken pleasure in learning from _GTD_ and _7 Habits_ and even from Gladwell’s _Outliers_, as they have provided me a beacon calling me to what is possible, but without purpose they mean little. I am uber-efficient and productive at work and recognized for it and I have a solid family life and a “character ethic” that is providing me reassurance as to my grounding of “foundation”, but something still remains missing. Gladwell seems to imply more effort, modeled after the rice farming cultures of Asia (more dedicated even than Weber and the “Protestant work ethic”), leads to true success when combined with ambition, opportunity, and talent, but without a mission, passion, interest, or direction I find “success” will always be elusive. I find productivity more and more empty the less and less I apply it to anything I find of great value. I have never lacked in ambition or talents, but have never found anything I found interested in enough to devote Gladwell’s magic 10,000 hours to. _GTD_ and _7 Habits_ help with creating a fantastic place from which to grow, but the underlying assumption is that we know what we are passionate about. I have found _What Color is Your Parachute?_, _What Should I Do with My Life?_ and _Is Your Genius At Work?_ helpful starting places for this analysis, but without an early cultivation and a lifelong examination I find the answer they are trying to help me find more elusive than ever. Thanks for the conversation.
Tom McLellan says on January 6th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Great article. Re the question “how do we bring our work in line with our inner, authentic self – and how do we cut out the work that isn’t?”… Two questions: a) does this excite me? and b) does this help other people? If you get a yes on both counts then keep at it, and otherwise keep searching because it’s worth finding.
Self-actualization is not the goal because it’s not supposed to be about you. Ideally it’s about how you can uniquely serve other people in a way that you find exciting.
LifeMadeGreat | Juliet says on January 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi
Excellent article. Possibly my favourite in the series.
I experience what you say, both as an employee and noticing other employees. I work a 3-day week and for most people that is unspeakable. It is “not acceptable”; it is “not working” it is “wrong”.
There is such an ingrained belief around what and how work should be. We are raised to believe that we “should work”. And, furthermore, we “should work hard”. It amazes me sometimes. I wrote a blog post on this at some stage.
I have experienced being too tired from work to have any “outside” life. Now I’ve changed that, but I see others struggling with the same problem.
When I worked as a holistic therapist, I saw so many people who want more from their lives, wanted creativity, but simply couldn’t get out of the traps of the corporate world.
Juliet
John Thibeaux says on January 7th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
My belief is that through reflection, we can change our personal story in a way that completely eliminates stress. For example, Dustin, you discussed the concept of “external demands” being a cause of stress What if we started looking at these demands as “service requests” instead of “external demands”. The word “service” has a sense of aspiration and is more accurate in describing how we give to the world. The word “request” gives the person being requested the power to say yes, no, or negotiate. Now, we have some service requests which we are more inclined to say yes to. (ex: requests from Supervisor) However, no matter who asks us for our service, we always have the ability to say no, or negotiate. By changing our language, we can shift our perspective and shift the trajectory of our life.
dcollins says on January 9th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Excellent article and great comments. I really like how John T. makes the difference between “work” and “service”. I have always felt tied to the Protestant work ethic – even though I’m Catholic. There is some validity and I can see how the mentality developed. Work should serve some higher good or principal – however you would define that. In this way you are “working toward” something and for something. The word “service” makes a better distinction. Whether you are a teacher, engineer or mechanic – if you feel you are doing a service you will probably have less stress and cope better. Likely I most of my careers have been this. Yet, I’ve also just worked where I feel like I’m not contributing anything but I get paid and I feed my family. I see the over-riding theme in the posts in this series. Find the passion and things get done, as Garth mentioned in his comment.
Peter Reid says on January 17th, 2009 at 2:47 am
In Praise of Mediocrity –
there is starting to be a bit of a new orthodoxy that we should all strive to find that thing which we were really meant for. So we are out there with our new Moleskine notebooks, worrying about what we should spend our Malcolm Gladwell endorsed 10,000 hours on. That message certainly resonates with me, and presumably for other people browsing this blog. We are all bright, creative, we blog a bit, we are quite introspective, we think we are a little different, and have insights that others might benefit from.
But,
it is really okay to be mediocre, I bet lots of people enjoy riding a bike more than Lance Armstrong does. I think he is fantastic – I don’t want to be him. Sometimes the commitment is too great, I don’t care that much.
sometimes introspection is the enemy of action. Who wants to work with Hamlet. A little planning and introspection is okay, too much becomes and end in itself.
a lot of smart people, find it better to dabble with a variety of things, than to excel at one. Some of it is just about building yourself as a person or not getting bored.
PS – thanks Dustin for an outstanding series of postings