Comments on: Work Hard, Not Long

By: Cory S

Cory S — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:47:03 +0000

Boy, I was a ‘long hour worker’ early in my career and was very fortunate to meet a person that truly was a ‘hard worker’, Dominic. He would come in at 9 AM, run 4-8 miles at lunch, THEN eat in the cafe, and leave at around 4:30 PM.

After a grueling week (I was an accountant back then), I asked him point blank, “just who do you think you are slacking off like this?”

His reply has stuck in my head ever since:
“Cory, you work for a living – meaning, you sit in front of your computer and those hours define output for your job. I get paid for my thoughts which are not bound by the number of hours I’m at my desk. Just yesterday, I thought up a new process that I implemented today saving the company $650k annually. What did you do?”

Changed my perspective and helped me prioritize grealy going forward.

By: TJ

TJ — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:07:54 +0000

David,

I’m CEO of CReative Weblogging – teh company that now hosts Businesspundit for Rob.

The issue stems from a bug in Mozilla’s Iframe implementation. If you upgrade to the newest version of Firefox the problem should be gone.

If not please let me know.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:58:43 +0000

Also…Rob, since the redesign, I find this site very difficult to use. As soon as the page comes up, a very irritating (flashing) ad strip appears right in the middle of the text.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:57:10 +0000

Good article, particularly the hard work of making emotional decisions. Long hours, though, are sometimes the name of the game. I don’t think you’ll find a successful startup (or internal corporate new venture) in which 70-hour weeks are not sometimes required. The key word, though, is “sometimes”…heavy work schedules should be done when necessary, not as a matter of competitive macho…

By: John Cox

John Cox — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:28:57 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I look at the numbers of hours that someone in my department works as a sign of lacking capabilities rather than a sign of dedication. Using the number of hours worked as a measurement for success shows a distinct lack of forethought as to the loss of productivities of others, as well as the eventual burn out factor which equates to turn over, or much worse, a lack of actual caring that the organization is moving forward.

Nice article!