Some of our best work rarely looks like work. In fact, it often looks lazy.
A hundred years ago, in a largely manufacturing economy, work looked like work. People stood at machines, cranking out widgets in large numbers (probably not large or fast enough). It was easy to see how much work was completed in a day.
Today, 80% of the workforce are knowledge workers: educated professionals who do mostly decisional, thinking work at a computer. It’s very difficult to judge how much work they’ve completed or the progress they’ve made each day (although, I’d argue “emails dispatched” might be an equivalently worthless measure as widgets cranked…). Additionally, today’s workers rarely do their most important work at their workstations.
Einstein was famous for doing his best thinking in the bathtub. Mozart and Beethoven did some of their best during late-night walks. Today, Morgan Housel does his while walking his dog, and some of our great thinkers and authors do theirs at the gym. My most creative or interesting ideas seem to come to me when I’m out for a run, driving, showering, or almost asleep (of course!).
Our world is starved for time, attention, and focused thinking today. When we put ourselves in an environment where our brains go on autopilot, we suddenly connect all kinds of unconnected thoughts and ideas in the background. Beautiful, simple, elegant, and creative solutions emerge.
Perhaps we need to give people more time to wander, walk, take a little nap, and, yes, think, during the day. The elegant solutions and ideas that emerge are probably worth the loss of a few minutes’ “productivity”. Then we can begin to judge performance based on outcomes rather than processes (most of which live in the brain anyway).
Yes, our best work rarely looks like work. Such is the life of the “knowledge” worker. Give yourself (and your team) a break and see what incredible ideas emerge.
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