written by JOHN MARK MINES | PRODUCTIVITY, PURPOSE, WORK-LIFE BALANCE
Make an impact on the world that can never be erased.
Maya Angelou
The North Americans
An American investment banker was passing through a coastal Mexican village. He saw just one fisherman carrying several large fin tuna. Astonished, the American asked him how long it took to catch them.
“Only a little while,” the man replied.
The American then asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, play with my children, sip wine, and play guitar with my amigos.”
The American saw an opportunity, and offered his unsolicited advice. “You should spend more time fishing and sell the extra fish. Then, buy a bigger boat and eventually a whole fleet. Then you can open your own cannery. You would need to leave this village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York City to expand your enterprise.”
“What then?” the fisherman wondered.
The American laughed. “That’s the best part. After expanding for 20 years, when the time is right you would sell your company and become very rich. You would make millions!”
“Millions?” asked the fisherman, “Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, play with your kids, sip wine, and play your guitar with your amigos!”
What Do You Do for a Living?
The battle between the North Americans is a clash of cultures. In one corner, the elitist achiever concentrates on success, performance, and wealth. Being American, this was my paradigm as well: get an education, grind through decades of hard work, then finally retire happily in old age.
Tim Ferriss calls this lifestyle the “deferred life plan” in his book 4-hour workweek. In this view, life is like farming: sow now, reap later. Like the fisherman, Ferriss suggests work should support your life, not the other way around. Don’t wait until retirement; start enjoying your life today.
This paradigm is based on the acknowledgment that time is not a renewable resource. When today is over, it’s gone forever. There are no do-overs or re-plays. Money, though, is much more flexible. Benjamin Franklin was wrong: time isn’t money. It’s far more valuable.
Life can be both business and pleasure. It needn’t be one long season of planting followed by a short season of harvest. If you can enjoy your life now, you should. And, according to Ferriss, you can.
But before you quit your job to work only four hours a week, you might want to consider an alternative.
You Valuate Me
In America, money is a euphemism for self-worth. It is the trophy of winning some unspoken competition. While this interpretation of money is common, that’s not entirely accurate.
Fundamentally, money isn’t status, happiness, or power; it’s value.
val·ue /ˈvalyo͞o/
noun : the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.
In Economics 101, money assigns value to a good or service. Ostensibly, it provides value to the buyer, which is why they are purchasing it in the first place. From manicures to smartphones to life-saving surgery, everything in the economy has a value. That value quantified by money.
The singular point of currency is to enable trade by assigning value to goods and services. The greenback was meant to be a tool, not a pedestal; a middleman, not a king.
But here’s the rub. If jobs create value, shouldn’t workers feel valued?
This is the paradox of modern capitalism. Somewhere along the meteoric rise in worker productivity came a precipitous drop in worker worth. Many of these workers somehow earn wages without providing any value. The jobs are, for lack of a better term, bullshit.
Bull… what?
Or at least that’s what David Graeber calls them in his book Bullshit Jobs. Graeber first expressed his idea as an online essay, and it went viral so fast it crashed the server. The testimonials came flooding in. Apparently, the concept of having a job void of purpose and impact resonated with millions of workers around the world.
Graeber argues that John Maynard Keynes was right: technological advancements in productivity should’ve allowed us to work only 15 hours a week by now. But rather than follow the fisherman’s example, we fill our time with extra work which doesn’t actually matter. That’s why, when asked if they make a meaningful contribution to the world, almost 40% of respondents said no.
Graeber categorizes bullshit jobs according to their dysfunction. “Flunkies” exist solely to make superiors feel, well, superior. Their existence pads the stats of their managers.
“Goons” exist merely to fend off other goons, like Apple’s army of lawyers fighting Samsung’s. And then there are “Task Masters.” You know the type: they watch the real work get done. Or, worse, they create extra work for no reason. Graeber calls them “bullshit generators.”
Task masters prioritize the appearance of busyness over progress. And now we have arrived at the arch-nemesis of productivity: pseudo-productivity.
Dissatisfied Labor
In his book Slow Productivity, Cal Newport defines pseudo-productivity as “the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.” It measures how quickly workers respond to emails or how many meetings they attend. When actual productivity is hard to measure, these intermediate metrics fill the void.
But they don’t matter. Pseudo-productivity metrics are arbitrary, trivial, and irrelevant. NASA didn’t brag about how many meetings it took to land on the moon. Steve Jobs never boasted about how many emails he sent to launch the iPhone. They didn’t share this information because, quite frankly, nobody cares.
In fact, pseudo-productivity is counter-productive. Ferriss argues to check email as little as possible. Newport argues to minimize the number of simultaneous projects so that administrative burdens don’t crowd out real work. While these metrics may feel like they’re helping, they are actually hurting.
Take the Money and Run
In bullshit jobs, productivity doesn’t matter because the work doesn’t matter. Here, the Mexican fisherman is right: work as little as possible, and spend the rest of your time enjoying life with family and friends.
Newport advocates for this approach. He tells of a successful website designer who had to choose between scaling up his business or reducing his hours. Like the fisherman, he chose the latter. He increased his wage rate so that he could design as few websites as possible while still enjoying a comfortable lifestyle.
In this paradigm, the job is a means to an end. It is nothing more than a paycheck. The attitude is simple: when possible, take the money and run.
But what if there’s another way?
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
In a bullshit job plagued by task masters and pseudo-productivity, quiet quitting makes sense. But there’s something better than quiet quitting: loudly laboring.
Loudly laboring means working for more than money. Musicians like The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Paul McCartney are still touring despite their geriatric age. Warren Buffett, worth $141 billion dollars, refuses to retire at the age of 94.
Still, he understands quiet quitting: “It’s kind of crazy to spend your life painting if you’re painting a subject you don’t want to look at,” he said in an interview. “I’ve gotten to paint my own painting in business on an unlimited canvas.”
It would have been unthinkable for Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, or Serena Williams to quit after crossing a financial threshold. They would never take the money and run. They also wouldn’t quiet quit; in fact, they were known for going above and beyond.
The brands of Apple, Microsoft, and Meta would be tarnished if Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg quit after becoming wealthy. Customers would question the quality of a company led by a quiet quitter.
That’s because quiet quitting can be incredibly harmful. Imagine relying on a public defense attorney or medical doctor who is a quiet quitter. Or if a brain surgeon decided to minimize the number of life-saving surgeries so that he could maximize hourly rate.
This is what both North Americans missed. If the Mexican fisherman becomes a successful entrepreneur, he will get rich. But that’s not all. He will also provide jobs, locally-sourced fish, and generational wealth. His resources would make a difference for his family and community. Heck, he might even enjoy the ride.
You don’t have to be a brain surgeon for your productivity to matter. You just have to believe that your work is worth more than a paycheck. When work matters, productivity matters. And when workers believe that productivity matters, you can kiss pseudo-productivity goodbye.
