This used to be my mentality in regards to work for the majority of my early twenties. Turns out pretty much every job out there will give you more work to do if you are too efficient. Eventually it reaches a point where you have too much on your plate and start getting burned out fairly quickly yet you’ve set the bar so high that anything less than maximum efficiency is considered lazy.
My new method is to work at 50%-70% efficiency while at work and I take my time on everything I’m asked to do. I’ve worked my ass off for about a decade at various jobs and was only rewarded with more work. I’ll save my efficiency for the things I actually care about in my life.
I have a coworker that is currently in the situation I was in five years ago. He’s working late every single day and barely has any time for personal business because he worked too hard at the beginning to “climb the ladder” that he’s now overworked and miserable as more things keep getting piled on top. I was talking to him the other day and he was saying that he started working on the weekends because he has so much shit he has to do.
I used to try to smash through everything as quick as I could. I would’ve told you I was just quick and efficient but I think the reality was I was usually tired or hungover or daydreaming about whatever thing and just didn’t have the attention span to do a good job.
I’ve been self employed for the last 10 years or so, which means extra efficiency on my part doesn’t reward anyone else.
However, during that time I’ve become a lot more methodical and diligent. I am consistently accurate. Basically because I need to own any oversights, which can be very costly, I make far fewer.
I actually started getting more recognition when I started producing 60-70 % or less instead of 120 %. It was like management thought that, if my tasks took longer, it was probably because I was very thorough and the task was very difficult, even though the end result would be the same. If I solved a task in 1 day, instead of 5 days, they regarded the task as easy instead of me being good. The slower i worked, the more applause I got from my manager… But, he was also an idiot… But, i wouldn’t be surprised if this was a pattern in other companies as well.
My mental model is somewhat orthogonal to this, 100% efficiency by definition is the most I can sustainably do indefinitely. I can probably do 150% if I really need to, but not for very long at all, and I’m usually between 85-105%.
If I’m doing ~30 hours a week of work I’ve been asked to do, or needs to get done, and doing 8-10 hours a week of whatever I think is important to prioritize, I’m probably in a pretty good place. I don’t tend to get overly rewarded with more work, and I’m still recognized as doing valuable and important stuff by my teammates.
If someone is doing way more than 40 hours in a week on more than a very rare occasion, some layer of management has failed, and if it’s the norm, the whole system has failed. I’m well aware that may be working as designed, but I would contend it was simply designed to fail.
Exactly! Employers and managers typically won’t know either, unless they are micromanagers who track your every move. If this was a start up and doing more will have a big impact, then putting in more effort is justified. Med/large company? Nahhh
This used to be my mentality in regards to work for the majority of my early twenties. Turns out pretty much every job out there will give you more work to do if you are too efficient. Eventually it reaches a point where you have too much on your plate and start getting burned out fairly quickly yet you’ve set the bar so high that anything less than maximum efficiency is considered lazy.
My new method is to work at 50%-70% efficiency while at work and I take my time on everything I’m asked to do. I’ve worked my ass off for about a decade at various jobs and was only rewarded with more work. I’ll save my efficiency for the things I actually care about in my life.
I have a coworker that is currently in the situation I was in five years ago. He’s working late every single day and barely has any time for personal business because he worked too hard at the beginning to “climb the ladder” that he’s now overworked and miserable as more things keep getting piled on top. I was talking to him the other day and he was saying that he started working on the weekends because he has so much shit he has to do.
Do just enough work to avoid getting fired.
I used to try to smash through everything as quick as I could. I would’ve told you I was just quick and efficient but I think the reality was I was usually tired or hungover or daydreaming about whatever thing and just didn’t have the attention span to do a good job.
I’ve been self employed for the last 10 years or so, which means extra efficiency on my part doesn’t reward anyone else.
However, during that time I’ve become a lot more methodical and diligent. I am consistently accurate. Basically because I need to own any oversights, which can be very costly, I make far fewer.
I actually started getting more recognition when I started producing 60-70 % or less instead of 120 %. It was like management thought that, if my tasks took longer, it was probably because I was very thorough and the task was very difficult, even though the end result would be the same. If I solved a task in 1 day, instead of 5 days, they regarded the task as easy instead of me being good. The slower i worked, the more applause I got from my manager… But, he was also an idiot… But, i wouldn’t be surprised if this was a pattern in other companies as well.
My mental model is somewhat orthogonal to this, 100% efficiency by definition is the most I can sustainably do indefinitely. I can probably do 150% if I really need to, but not for very long at all, and I’m usually between 85-105%.
If I’m doing ~30 hours a week of work I’ve been asked to do, or needs to get done, and doing 8-10 hours a week of whatever I think is important to prioritize, I’m probably in a pretty good place. I don’t tend to get overly rewarded with more work, and I’m still recognized as doing valuable and important stuff by my teammates.
If someone is doing way more than 40 hours in a week on more than a very rare occasion, some layer of management has failed, and if it’s the norm, the whole system has failed. I’m well aware that may be working as designed, but I would contend it was simply designed to fail.
Exactly! Employers and managers typically won’t know either, unless they are micromanagers who track your every move. If this was a start up and doing more will have a big impact, then putting in more effort is justified. Med/large company? Nahhh
I learned that lesson in high school. Always more tasks if you finish any