How to Spend Your Days
- Timmy's tired.
- Timmy just worked 20 hours.
- Timmy revamped his corporate software.
- Timmy rebuilt his infrastructure.
- Timmy's going insane.
- But, Timmy thinks entrepreneurs are workhorses.
- So, Timmy thinks he's heading in the right direction.
Now, ask your bad self:
- Is Timmy really heading in the right direction?
If Timmy took 20 hours to debug a tiny piece of code for his client's software, did he really make good use of his time? Here's what conventional wisdom thinks:
- The more X hours you work, the more $X you'll make.
- The more stress you have, the more $X you'll make.
- The more hectic your schedule is, the more $X you'll make.
- The busier your schedule, the more $X you'll make.
Reality check time:
- No one cares how hard you work.
- No one cares how tired you are.
- No one cares how many stars you have.
- The world doesn't care.
- Your mom doesn't care.
The world doesn't pay for the number of hours you work. The world is selfish: It wants you to give it something first -- before it can return the favor. In our beautiful free market world, the gorgeous relationship boils down to this:
How Much You Earn = How Much Value You Provide to the World
So:
- Don't spend chump hours.
- Don't do chump work.
- Don't make chump-change.
Instead, do something extraordinary.
Give value.
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8 Comments
on How to Spend Your Days
Mark Harrison
2007-10-19 04:03:19 UTC
> 5. Your mom doesn’t care.
Yes she does.
She's worried about you.
She thinks you're working much, much too hard.
Thank you so much for these things (which I subscribe to by RSS.)
I'm now trying to persuade my business partner to subscribe also :-)
m
2007-10-19 14:16:36 UTC
"How Much You Earn = How Much Value You Provide to the World"
By this logic, a professional athlete provides much more value to the world than a pediatric oncologist. A marketing director provides tons more value than an educator helping homeless teens learn job and life skills and earn their diploma. A teacher provides almost no value at all. And a police officer is far less valuable to society than a film actor. Doesn't sound very logical to me.
NewWorldOrder
2007-10-19 16:42:24 UTC
m,
If you take value to be wealth and wealth to be what people want (as defined by Paul Graham), then by transitivity value is nothing more than what people want. I can very easily believe that at any given moment far more people in the U.S. (and world for that matter) rather watch Kobe Bryant/Julia Roberts than a high school math teacher/policeman/etc--MILLIONS of dollars worth. So with respect to logic, it's perfectly logical.
Frank Roche
2007-11-01 13:43:47 UTC
That is a knockout, Kris. Very well said: Give value!
Frank Roche
2007-11-01 13:44:47 UTC
Sorry...not Kris...it was referred to by HR Capitalist...great piece, regardless.
The Working Dead | 4EvaYoung.com
2007-11-08 17:12:58 UTC
[...] At Trizle a great post How To Spend Your Days challenges conventional wisdom that thinks: [...]
K-
2007-11-08 22:47:29 UTC
so true, no one really cares
Janice
2007-11-18 05:54:46 UTC
Being in a third country, even if you work hard enough, the money you'll make will never be enough. So, as an alternative from my day job, I sqeeze in small online freelance projects. My day job requires me to be at the office for 8 long hours. But with my online projects, I only have to spend an hour or two for an 8 hour equivalent wage. So now I say, "you don't have to work that hard, you just have to work smart".
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