Last year, I read a book called Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel. I thought it was going to be a book on surviving in today’s hybrid environment. It was, but there was a larger point to be made. When we work from home, we cut out a lot of the unproductive time we have in the office. For instance, people stopping by for no reason or someone asking you something they should figure out on their own just because you’re there. The authors found that they got their work done a lot quicker and then they wondered: what if we all were able to get our jobs done in less than 40 hours a week?
Could Working Less Improve Society?
What if every single one of us were able to get our jobs done in less than 40 hours per week? What would we be able to use our free time for? In the book, Petersen and Warzel dove deep on how much better society would be if we did work less. We’d be able spend more time with our families, caring for our children or enjoying our parents before they’re gone. We’d have time to volunteer, working side-by-side with others who want to make a particular corner of the world a better place. We could focus less on making money for ourselves and more on lifting others up who can’t lift themselves. We could work on ourselves: our health, our hobbies, and having the experiences we’ve always dreamed of having.
Today, we spend so much time at the office that most of us don’t have time to do a good job at any of these “extra” things. We don’t have time to do the things we claim matter most to us. Instead, we come home every day exhausted. We do the bare minimum when talking with our kids and spouses, many times while driving them to various activities. Then, we plop down on the couch hoping Netflix has something mindless that will help us forget about our tough day at work.
A year or so after reading Out of Office, I have never forgotten its message. Our workaholic culture isn’t good for anyone – not us, not our families, not the most vulnerable in society. Overwork is really only good for one thing: making money. A little more balance, especially for those of us who are salaried, would bring us money and give us more time to spend with loved ones.
Maybe We Shouldn’t Optimize Everything We Do Around Money?
We (Americans, at least) have built our entire culture around money. Think about it. All the crazy decisions our government makes come down to optimizing for money. Why don’t we have universal healthcare? Because a workforce that needs health insurance and only gets decent healthcare from their jobs will keep working long into their sixties. Why are schools set-up to urge kids to memorize facts instead of learn concepts through experiences? Because churning out people who will follow orders and who are used to getting the external validation of grades sets them up to be great workers for businesses. Why don’t we have broad and lengthy maternity leave, free child care, and just generally more support for parents? Because unsupported parents are afraid that if they lose their jobs, they can’t support their families. Parents who can’t afford child care will have fewer kids and take less time off. That’s good for business too.
Maybe we, as a society, aren’t doing this on purpose, but we are clearly optimizing for money and it could be causing us to miss the whole point of living.
Optimizing for Fulfillment
Bill Perkins who wrote Die with Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life, argues that we should be optimizing for fulfillment, not money. I’m inclined very much to agree with him. Once we’ve got enough money, do we really need to keep working this hard for more? Could we work a little less and spend the extra time on something that makes society better? What would it be like to not have to live life at such a frantic pace? What if more of us opted out of our current obsession with making money and did something….else?
I recently started following a blog called the Slow Fioneers. It’s a blog for people who are Coast Financially Independent (or want to be!). That means that they’ve saved up enough money that, if they don’t spend it and just let it grow through the magic of compound interest, they’ll have enough money to retire at some date they’re happy with in the future. They just need to make enough money to cover their expenses. Instead of continuing to work at their high-paying, high-stress jobs, they’ve chosen to do something more fulfilling. It might be part-time work or a less stressful job that they really enjoy. They spend some time figuring out what they really want to be doing with their most precious non-renewable resource (time) and they do that. I find this incredibly inspiring.
What Would You Do Differently If You Were Optimizing for Fulfillment?
Most of us who have been pouring 40 hours plus overtime into a high-stress role probably don’t even know what we would do if we suddenly had more time. Or, we have ideas (travel!), but have never validated that we’d actually like to do those things for an extended period of time. It’s worth taking a little time to think about that now, before you get to the point where you’re ready to take some time off. It’s hard to work less when you don’t know what you’d do with that extra free time. Certainly, you could do a lot of good in the world if you spent that time intentionally.
That’s my mini-homework assignment for you this week. Think about this question:
If you suddenly had more time in your life, what would you do with it?
