Comments on: Sometimes you need to work hard

By: Jannie

Jannie — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:55:21 +0000

you’re one of the lucky ones if you love your job and don’t mind working hard for it. i agree, working hard and working smart are not mutually exclusive…

By: Chris Palmieri

Chris Palmieri — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:21:21 +0000

Ushan and Rogier,

Thanks for the kind and insightful comments. In case it wasn’t clear in my original post, I have not read 4-hour work week, and am not criticizing it directly. I brought it up as a recent spark that has ignited a lot of interest and writing in the subject, not all of which I think is particularly useful.

By: Rogier

Rogier — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:02:24 +0000

Just discovered your blog through Hitotoki > AQ > iixxii, while I need to work on my graduation thesis from which the deadline is looming. Talking about not working smart ;-)

Anyway, I agree with your points. But unfortunately working smart is so much harder than working hard…

Like your blog, keep it up!

By: Ushan

Ushan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:08:04 +0000

There are always different view points when looking at something to examine and to understand. My understanding of “4-hour workweek” is different from viewing it as a struggle for avoiding hard work. To me, achieving 4 hour work week is like improving businesses processes by managing human resources in the most productive manner. It is like deploying right people in right job roles. By outsourcing you improve two things at the same time. First, you improve your cost structure to stay competitive. Second, you improve your productivity by delegating a part of your work to people who can perform it even better than you. As a result you get the free time. From here onwards you don’t have to follow Timothy Ferriss’ footsteps. Now it is up to you how to use these hours. either you can use it for socials or you can use it to perform even better/complex tasks.
To me, getting time to learn and to perform new, creative and more complex jobs is something like hard working. By outsourcing, what you already have learned and performed, you can open a window to explore new horizons for hard working and smart working.

Andrew Brown of Small Business Guru had written an interesting article as a critique of “4-hour workweek”, where he compares Timothy’s suggested outsourcing companies with some randomly selected company. And he finds the unknown better than the well known. you can check smallbusinessguru.com for “my 4-hour work week experiment”. So, it is worth getting form Timothy Ferriss what he offers and it is smart to use it in one’s own interests.

By: Chris Palmieri

Chris Palmieri — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:28:04 +0000

Tony,

Maybe it’s a little more tangible for the self-employed, but even inside a company, the realisation of efforts can come in many forms. Promotions & raises, the opportunity to take on more interesting projects or make your own projects, etc.

By: Tony Mosley

Tony Mosley — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:07:54 +0000

I think this concept only truly works for the self-employed… the realisation of your efforts are tangible in comparison to be told you did ‘great’. I think the ppeople who are ultimately successful ARE the one who work smart and also tirelessly.

Who’d have thought it.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:54:10 +0000

Very thoughtful stuff. I’ve got two points to make about 4 Hour Workweek:

-the title is so provocative that many people miss what he’s actually talking about for the bulk of the book, which is primarily how to outsource operations at an online supplement store. Sure, many of the outsourcing concepts are made generic, but that’s what it is at the core.

-he worked his ass off for a long time to acheive his success. The world doesn’t owe any of us anything and things that come easy aren’t very rewarding, unless they are in the form of cake or ice cream :)

By: perke

perke — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:05:19 +0000

The 4hr work week fits in Slavoj Zizek’s decaffeinated culture idea. Drink as much coffee as you want coz it has no(?)caffeine; Work as little as you want, coz you can do anything in no-time.
Interesting you’re touching upon this today, I’m just reading Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, which had been seating on my shelf for ages, without me being aware of its contents, while I’ve been looking for some philosophy of work.
And now I have a history of ideas/philosophy of labor, work, action, which I’m looking forward to going back to reading, as soon as I do some work here.

By: Olivier

Olivier — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:59:59 +0000

Oh how I agree with the bit about “if you yearn for a 4 hours work week, maybe you need another job – one you love” bit.

Sure, I’m not the happiest person in the world when I have a very long weeks with deadlines falling in place at the wrong time, but I do love what I’m doing, I do respect and appreciate the people I’m working with, and I do think my work actually is making the world a little bit better.

Any time I want to whine about “too much work” I remind myself of the two months I worked in a factory. A modern factory, mind you, and with decent pay too – so I’m not talking about slave-like labour in parts of China – . There, I learned that there are jobs that will make me happy and inspired, and others that will make me unhappy, sick, miserable.

All that said, and especially in the context of the Japanese workforce, it is always important to remember the distinction between working hard and working long hours. 3 hours of incredibly intense technical work can be a hard day’s worth in my book. Droning at a desk doing nothing until 11pm every day, not so much.