No One Cares How Long You Worked
I went to a socially distant barbecue recently. It was only 8 people, but it still felt strange. COVID-19 will never feel normal. But there was something I noticed which stood out as completely bizarre and nothing new— a guy at the party working on his laptop. Drinking a beer, chatting with friends, and doing serious work that has to get done. He bragged about his 80-hour work week. It made me wonder how many of those hours are productive?
The people I’ve met who do this are consultants, investment bankers, and tech workers. I’ve seen it living in the Bay Area and New York. It’s always the same scene: in midst of a summer party or driving up winding roads to ski, they take out their laptop and open up sensitive documents and “work.” Sometimes they’re several drinks deep, sometimes they’re minutes away from falling asleep.
Why are the number of hours “worked” considered valuable?
I’m a freelance writer and content strategist. I have taken on projects at an hourly rate but I prefer to work on a project basis. This is because the client is looking for the completed project. That’s the value they receive. You can’t hand someone the pile of hours you worked and nod your head proudly. You’re being paid to produce a result.
The 9 to 5 workweek mirrors the industrial factory schedule from the 19th Century. Today, email has become the new assembly line. Time on screen is perceived as valuable. But we’re not all producing widgets. Most of the time we’re solving problems which demands critical thinking. This is something you can’t do effectively at 1 am.
Verrocchio's workshop
During the High Renaissance Andrea del Verrocchio had a workshop in Florence. He would have apprentices producing sculptures and paintings for clients. Some of his pupils were Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, to name a few.* The greatest artists in history had to show up each day and work. It shatters the notion that artists lay around waiting for inspiration to strike. These guys were basically 1099 employees— if they didn’t produce, they didn’t get paid.
Leonardo da Vinci and Verrocchio painted the famous Baptism of Christ. They were commissioned by the Church of San Salvi.? Do you think the church cared how many hours were spent working on the painting?
There’s this false belief that you cannot deliver high quality work quickly. That’s a myth. Four hundred years after da Vinci, a Dutchman named Vincent Van Gogh would pick up a paintbrush at 27 and start his career. Van Gogh only painted for 10 years. During this time, he painted over 900 paintings and 1,100 sketches.? His average time to complete a painting was 4 days, but during his time at Auvers-sur-Oise, he got that up to one painting a day!
If you were in the fortunate position to buy a Van Gogh painting would you care if the $68 million-dollar piece was only painted in 9 hours? Would it matter?
The point is the result.
You can’t deliver high-quality results by simply logging hours like a prisoner making hash marks on a cell wall. I warned about this at the start of COVID-19.§ That remote work will be abused if we’re not careful.
We can all do better work if we stop perceiving time served as something to be valued. Let’s value the result.
P.S. — this article took me 33 minutes to write.
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* Isaacson, Walter. 2018. Leonardo da Vinci. Simon & Schuster. (link to the book)
? Chiesa, Angela Ottino Della. 1986. The Complete Paintings of Leonardo da Vinci (Class of World Art) . Penguin Books. (link to the book)
? Velde, Erik van der. 2020. "How long did it take Van Gogh to finish a painting?" Van Gogh Studio. April 5. https://www.vangoghstudio.com/how-long-did-it-take-van-gogh-to-finish-a-painting/.
§ Maisano, Robert. 2020. "How The Coronavirus Will Change Work Forever." Thrive Global. March 18. https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-the-coronavirus-will-change-work-forever/.