Thursday, October 15, 2009

Work smarter, not harder.

Rarely do I ever re-post an entire article, but I've been preaching this method to mostly deaf ears much of my professional career. So glad Fast Company published this piece.

The workforce is full of what I call "inefficient martyrs": people who believe that putting in long hours, sucking up to people they know are unqualified to be in management, and sacrificing their personal lives is somehow equal or superior to accomplishing something significant with smarter methods and less effort. Good planning, time management, allowing yourself pleasure, traveling frequently, daydreaming, actively making time and effort to expose one's self to different cultures and radical ideas... just taking time to experience things outside of "work" which make one a more insightful, productive and valuable contributor to the workplace [and ultimately society] has all been demonized by American corporate culture as lazy and flaky. These "lazy and flaky" afflictions on corporate America are the ones who innovate, become successful entrepreneurs, speak at TED conferences, and generally make the world a better place. The inefficient martyrs will rise like stars within their companies, be paid too much to leave, contribute nothing of value to society and continue to hate their lives - while livin' The American Dream.

Fast Company | Design & Innovation | Hard Work's Overrated, Maybe Detrimental.

A co-founder of Flickr argues that hard work often doesn't amount to much--and neuroscience offers some backing for the claim.

Caterina Fake, who, with her husband Stewart Butterfield, founded Flickr, knows a thing or two about bliztkreig work schedules. But she points out that late nights are seldom very useful in the grand scheme of things. Hard work? Overrated:

When we were building Flickr, we worked very hard. We worked all waking hours, we didn't stop. My Hunch cofounder Chris Dixon and I were talking about how hard we worked on our first startups, his being Site Advisor, acquired by McAfee--14-18 hours a day. We agreed that a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out". Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn't--and other time-consuming activities. This time around we have eliminated a lot of freaking out time. We seem to be working less hard this time, even making it home in time for dinner.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that's what you like to do.


That raises the question: How do you set aside the mind space to see patterns, make connections, and read what people want? How do you find the right thing to work on?

Fake points to the salient example of Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA. They spent a lot of time lollygagging and goofing off, going to parties and bullshitting over coffee.

That might seem like a historical footnote, but our everyday experience vindicates it. After all, have you ever had a great idea at your desk? But how often does that bulb go off in the shower, or in bed?

Modern neuroscience actually vindicates this apparently lackadaisical approach. It turns out that the best way to find breakthrough ideas might be to avoid working hard. As the Wall Street Journal reported this summer:

By most measures, we spend about a third of our time daydreaming, yet our brain is unusually active during these seemingly idle moments. Left to its own devices, our brain activates several areas associated with complex problem solving, which researchers had previously assumed were dormant during daydreams. Moreover, it appears to be the only time these areas work in unison.

"People assumed that when your mind wandered it was empty," says cognitive neuroscientist Kalina Christoff at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who reported the findings last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As measured by brain activity, however, "mind wandering is a much more active state than we ever imagined, much more active than during reasoning with a complex problem."

She suspects that the flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning. That may create the mental framework for new ideas. "You can see regions of these networks becoming active just prior to people arriving at an insight," she says.


The researchers found support for the idea that blinding insights favor a prepared mind--that is, you've got to really internalize the problem at hand if you're to find any sort of solution. (More more on that, check out this article from last year in the New Yorker, by Jonah Lehrer.) But to actually bring those insights to life, you've got to step back. (See why graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister advocates taking time off.)

But if the daydreaming hypothesis is right--and it seems hard to deny--more hours at your desk are actually counterproductive. You'd do better by setting aside lots of playtime, to let your mind wander. Only then will you stumble your way onto what's important.

Modern office design is actually converging upon this idea, without any prodding from neuroscience--for example, Facebook's new offices seem to be organized more around living rooms and DJ booths than cubicles. Elsewhere in office design, conference rooms are quickly being crowded out by lounge spaces. In other words, the very types of places that Watson and Crick found so useful.

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