Member-only story
We’ve Got It All Wrong. We Need 5-Hour Work Days.
Or to focus on an entirely different metric.
I used to work with a chain-smoking father. We became good friends, although his life-ending habit was visible through his deathly red eyes, deep cough, and constant flu-like symptoms.
He’d arrive at work at 9 am. Getting coffee was his first work task. This required going down the elevator twenty floors to the lobby cafe, waiting in line, ordering, waiting for the order and then walking outside to have a smoke with the coffee. After coffee time it was easily 9:45 am. He’d then come over and chit-chat to the rest of us. After he got tired of that, he’d muster up the little energy left in his body to open his email inbox. It’s as though the universe’s creator knew how to piss him off. The first email was almost always designed to mess with his brain. He’d be sure to let us know, too — more time down the drain.
Pretty quickly, it was 11 am, and he’d sent two emails that produced zero revenue. 11 am became 12 pm, fast, and that meant a long lunch and more smoke to darken his lungs. 1:30 pm was the usual return to work time. Thankfully, that’s when the team meeting occurred. All he had to do was go to the fridge and grab a coke, then find the meeting room and sit down … to complain. What could have been a 60-minute meeting became 90…
