Length is not a virtue
Originally published in my newsletter on sustainable pace. Subscribe for free.
It was around 3pm when the last meeting of the day ended. I had not planned anything after that. My most important tasks for the day were already finished before lunchtime.
When I speak about sustainable pace and the principle of managing your energy, I tell people to enjoy the fair-weather days in order to have fuel in the tank when the foul weather hits. If the day was easy and you got the important work done early, savour it, enjoy it, and let yourself relax and recover. Sooner or later, a time will come to work hard and push yourself. Will you be able to do it when it happens? What do your energy reserves look like?
Fair weather, for now.
So what did I do after the meeting? Spent the next hour mindlessly wandering between Outlook, Teams, the company intranet, Viva Engage (the intra-company social networking site), Slack, and reading the news.
This is probably the most difficult area for me to follow my own advice. I don’t know where it comes from, but I have a feeling the Lutheran work ethic, culture and upbringing have at least something to do with it. You need to earn your right to exist by being a productive member of society. You must not be a burden to others. Your value is derived from the work you do. Without it, what are you?
I feel pressure to at least maintain the appearance of doing something that could be considered work. Up until it’s time to go home and stop pretending. I often do this even when working from home, with no one watching.
It takes conscious effort to push against this innate resistance. To let go. To say the day’s work is done even if hours on the clock tell otherwise.
Because in knowledge work, the quantity — such as time and effort spent, or how many tasks got done — says nothing about the impact and value of what you actually did. And exhausting yourself doing mindless activities just means you have a little less to give to the work that actually matters the following day.
To quote Peter Drucker (2002), the management scholar who originally came up with the concept of knowledge work: “Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.” For example, “in judging the performance of a teacher, we do not ask how many students there can be in his or her class. We ask how many students learn anything — and that’s a quality question.” (Drucker, 1999). The same logic applies to almost everything in knowledge work.
A meeting does not become better by extending its duration.
A report will not become more useful by adding more pages to it.
The impact of a presentation does not increase with the number of slides it contains.
The amount of time spent doing an activity does not make the activity more worthwhile.
A newsletter article does not become more valuable by simply increasing the word count.
Do you share the struggle? Is there something you consistently do that has little to no real value, but feel compelled to keep doing anyway — just to feel like you're earning your place?
References:
Drucker, Peter F. (1999). Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge. California Management Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, 79-94.
Drucker, Peter (2002). The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.