Paul Short

Live to Work or Work to Live?

The Culture Chronicles

August / September 2007 By: Paul Short Volume 5 Number 4

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Many years ago I was interviewing a young kid right out of college for an engineering position. He was sharp and engaging, but he started asking questions about how many hours he was expected to work. Then he looked at me with a grimace and asked, "Do you live to work, or work to live?"

That question has stuck with me for more than twenty years. I've given it a great deal of thought.

This is similar to the question, "Have you quit beating your wife?" In that question there is an assumption that at some time you've beaten your wife. The question allows that perhaps you've quit, but at some point you've been a wife-beater. There's no room within the question for a non-violent husband.

Likewise, there's an assumption buried within the live-to-work question: that living and working are mutually exclusive. One cannot do both at the same time.
When you're alive, you're not at work. When at work, you're not alive. Somehow when you walk in the door to the office, you become one of Romero's Undead, a zombie that groans his way through the workday, arms stuck straight out, rocking down the hall on straight legs. Only when the workday is over do you become one of the living again.

I see this attitude everywhere I look. I've seen countless articles about "Balancing Life and Work." I turn on a country radio station and every other song is about Friday nights, great weekends, and the drudgery of the workweek.
Then there's the common bromide, "When I die I won't be sorry that I didn't spend more time in the office."

What a crock. It's another saying that has the same hidden assumptions.
This attitude is a terrible human tragedy. Paid work takes up a third or more of our waking hours. It is much too important to be dead doing it, much too important to spend wishing we were doing something else. Yet the idea that it's separate from living is ingrained in our cultures, in the rules preventing employees from doing non-work related tasks during "business hours," in the praise we give them for working during "their own time," in the time sheets we force upon them, in the way we keep close track of sick and vacation time.

This attitude is perhaps changing, though much too slowly for my taste. The trend in which more people are working as independent contractors is movement in the right direction. An independent contractor can largely do the work when and where she pleases. That leaves room for her to take care of family and personal matters when she chooses as well. Speaking from personal experience as an independent contractor, the line between work done for pay and other work is non-existent. That is how it should be.

Having everyone be an independent contractor can lead to a mercenary attitude, and that's bad for culture. What company leadership needs to do is to focus intently on what's important: how the company creates value, i.e. giving customers better bang for the buck or the ability to do something they couldn't do before. What is the product or service that creates that value? How is it delivered? Who are the customers? What are the steps we need to do to create that value?

Do that, communicate it like crazy to employees, and then measure people on how they meet those steps. Quit worrying about whether they do it in the office, at home or at the local Starbucks. Quit worrying whether they take off to the doctor's office, to a school function or just take the afternoon off. Who cares, as long as the value is being created? Change the assumption that work is separate from life, and focus on the goal.

Remember that we don't create value simply by putting in time and we don't create value with our hands. We create value with our minds. We are ALL knowledge workers. Even a mechanic fixes cars with the specialized knowledge in his head. His hands are only a tool. Give people the tools and training to allow those minds to reach their potential.

I see no difference between work and life; they are inseparable. In my last hours I'll be glad that I founded companies that created economic value, where people liked to work and where they grew as human beings. I'll be glad that I was the best husband and father I could be, and did some of those crazy ultra sports that I've gotten into. I'm sure I'll have my share of regrets, but "spending too much time in the office" won't be one of them.

Paul Short is CEO of Quadric, Inc., and runs the web site www.culturechronicles.com.