I admire people who work as little as possible
Yet manage to get the same results someone working 14 hours a day is getting
Starting off with today’s brain strain:
A man is found dead in a field with an unopened backpack next to him. As he was approaching the center of the field, the man knew he was going to die.
Answer at the end, I promise you’re not gonna die by then.
Glorification of busy
9 out of 10 times if you ask someone how they have been, they’re gonna say “busy”. At least in our “bubble”. This is not a new subject, yet I feel it’s one that needs to be addressed again.
We do that because we tend to be rewarded for being busy.
Most jobs pay per hour. White collar ones don’t, but they pay in potential career uplift. Start that back-breaking internship, you’re gonna be a manager someday!
That nuclear approach does indeed work for some people and there are plenty of cases of people who made it because they worked 14 hours a day.
Technically, I’m one of those people, since I did nothing else but work for the past decade, with no consideration for my free time, mental health or, to be honest, productivity.
Because who needs to focus on productivity when you can just throw in another all nighter?
What if being busy meant you’re incompetent with your time?
That statement is going to hurt a few people and I’m definitely not a fan favorite right now.
What if you made it not BECAUSE you stayed busy, but DESPITE it?
For the sake of lateral thinking, imagine that being busy would be one of the worst things in the world. Imagine it would be equivalent with being lazy. That being busy would mean that you don’t know how to prioritize and pick the battles that are worth fighting.
To add a cherry on top, imagine that there are a few people who realized that true productivity means producing as much as possible with the lowest time investment.
And imagine these people don’t really want to share this well kept secret.
Instead, they preach (and make money) by glorifying being busy and working 14+ hours per day.
And when their clients eventually don’t succeed, who’s fault is it? The client’s, of course, because he/she could have worked harder.
If you want a fun mental exercise, try changing your perspective and treating being busy as a bad thing. Then eliminate the things that make you busy without producing enough value.
Answer: The person was skydiving. The unopened backpack is his parachute.
Note about this newsletter:
It’s been 5 days! I somehow managed to send this email everyday (albeit at chaotic hours). I’m going to take the weekend off, so don’t expect anything during the next couple of days. See you on Monday!
Thank you for your support & for the hundreds of people who subscribed. You’re cool.