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Hard Work versus Smart Work
Our culture demands hard work. What we should focus on instead is smart work.
I don’t know about you — but I like to be productive.
Whether what I produce is tangible or intangible, productive work feels good.
When I get into the flow of writing something, the sense of accomplishment and excitement is difficult to put into words. This also applies to spending time altering my websites and learning new ways to improve upon them.
Unfortunately, our culture is fixated on the idea of hard work. Put your nose to the grindstone, get your back into it, push, go go go. That’s why the unions came into being — so that employers couldn’t literally work their employees to death.
The other fixation that goes with this is profit.
While many companies do right by both consumers and their employees, there are many more that don’t. They use the fewest people they can for the most hours for the least money. Oh, and contractors are great because then they don’t have to pay them benefits or do anything that might incur further costs.
Profit is money ABOVE and BEYOND operating costs. Yes, it’s a goal of any business. But when that number is in the BILLIONS of dollars — that should reflect back to the employees far more often than it does (just look at Amazon, for…
