The Hard Truth about Hard Work
If you think that working hard makes you a great person, get that idea out of your head
Things were hectic and I was working a hundred hours a week, which was nothing surprising on Wall Street in the nineties. Miraculously, planets lined up and I could get a one-week vacation (more like a permit) to go back home and see my folks for the holidays, in Italy.
I was a rookie, not even a year out of business school. After not so careful consideration, I had decided to sell my life to the glittering world of investment banking for what was back then a highly attractive compensation package (as in: the money is awesome; the rest, I’ll figure it out). I was a rookie. I mean, a slave.
So I boarded a flight on Christmas Eve, eager to take a well-deserved break, be with my family, sleep a lot and eat well.
Twelve hours later, exhausted, as I was hugging my mom and dad -- coat still on and suitcase by my feet -- the phone rang. A voice from four and a half thousand miles away said that I had to go back. “There’s an emergency, we have an important client meeting on January 2nd and have to crank out the presentation. We need you here.”
No apologies, no sorry-to-ruin-your-vacation, no sorry-to-ruin-your-life, nothing. What they really needed me there for is still unclear to this day, as at the time I was -- like any other fellow fresh out of school -- the most fungible of human resources, a commodity. Nonetheless, I hopped on the first flight to New York, got there, and went straight to the office from Kennedy airport, suitcase and all.
One week later, I got out of the office and went home, same suitcase and all.
After that brutal week, people at work would label me “a great guy” because I worked so hard without throwing in the towel or (physically) collapsing, because I could endure work imprisonment for so long without complaining, and because I chose to sacrifice my vacation on the altar of a supreme cause. Were my presence and contribution necessary, essential to the cause? Of course not. I was totally replaceable and didn’t do anything exceptional or unique. But I had to be there -- my culture made me feel the moral obligation to play along and torture myself, all aimed at being socially accepted and viewed as a good person, a great guy (and then there was the “I don’t want to get fired” thing, but that’s a different story).
We live in a society where hard work is glorified as a foundational value. I’ve lost count of how many times I heard people say “What a great guy. Such a hard worker!”.
Hard work makes you great; some work makes you ok; no work makes you bad -- that's the kind of culture we’ve been brought up in. You would expect greatness to be more a function of a bunch of other things, like generosity, compassion, ability to listen, creativity, or courage. But no, you are great first and foremost because you work hard. Then these other qualities might as well get in the mix, but, if you’re not a hard worker, you’re definitely a second-tier person. Sorry.
You may think that I’m exaggerating. After all, we’re no longer in the eighteenth century, and our set of values has evolved to prioritize elements that are untethered from work, let alone hard work.
Yet, hundreds of years of evidence reveal that endurance and willingness to sacrifice continue to be regarded as two of the most sought-after qualities, or virtues, of a good, decent person. And hard work incorporates them both in abundance. It all seems to boil down to social acceptance. As if we were talking about being admitted to an exclusive club -- the Great Guys League -- where, for our application to be even considered, we were to produce some sort of proof that we are willing and able to work hard until we drop dead.
But, as Seinfeld’s Kramer would say, let me clue you in on something: there’s no Great Guys League.
Hard work is necessary and justified under many circumstances; it gets the job done and creates value. I’m not saying that hard work shouldn’t exist. What I’m saying is that the amount of hard work that gets done -- or just work, for that matter -- should not be a highly weighted variable in a human being’s evaluation equation. I would argue that it should not be a variable at all. You are not a good person because you choose to get devastated by working long hours and sacrificing whatever else is in your life.
The question we should ask ourselves then is “why do we have to signal society that we work hard to be accepted and considered good, decent persons?”. To me, this is a mystery. If anybody knows the answer, please unveil it to me -- I’ll be waiting with the same anticipation of Vatican observers watching the chimney at St. Peter’s Basilica for a hint of white smoke. All I know is that we shouldn’t.
I happen to like working hard, being super busy when there’s a deadline to meet or some objective to reach. But I also happen to like doing nothing, staring at the ceiling and just thinking (highly underrated activity, if you ask me). And when I do nothing, I don’t feel guilty or socially inadequate.
The hard truth is that, when I happen to talk about this (not unique, by any stretch of the imagination) perspective with anybody whose brain is endowed with at least one gray cell, I always see heads nodding in agreement. As in, of course, how could you possibly evaluate a human being based on how hard they work? That’s preposterous! But then they go back to their routines and -- almost unconsciously -- resume embracing the usual, entrenched hard work-centered view.
Maybe that happens to all of us.
Almost unconsciously, with our brains switched off, we get attracted to the values that we’ve been fed for all our lives. And we go back to thinking about how much hard work we’d have to show to maintain our enrollment in the Great Guys League, or how much hard work we’d have to produce proof of to get admitted.
Thinking about producing proof to get admitted into something, and once in, maintaining our enrollment is probably the most frustrating aspect of being a social creature... love this post!