We do too much. We carry too many projects. This overproduction creates problems which we try to fix by working even more.
We value most what we create (see Made by hand and The upside of irrationality). To be happy, you want to focus on making interesting stuff. This takes time and dedication. Yet as Graham’s essay The top idea in your mind stresses, we often fall into the trap of thinking mostly about money and personal disputes. These thoughts pull us away from our interests and prevent us from doing great work. As an example, I hear that Tiger Woods isn’t playing great golf. I bet he is either stuck into money problems or personal disputes, or both.
It is hard to be overworked by writing a book, by writing research articles or by playing golf. People are overworked dealing with email, context switching, money, and touchy relationships. This abundance of work makes people sad and boring. And this type of work tends to reproduce. The more you have, the more you will have.
Unemployment and pollution are visible results of our overproduction. Yet there are many more negative side effects. In academia, we train more and more Ph.D.s every year. Yet we have had too many Ph.D.s in the job market since the seventies. We write more and more research papers every year, and spend more and more time applying for research grants… but professors spend less and less time on curiosity-driven research.
It is cool to produce great work, but it is not cool to work 60 hours a week unless it is out of passion. And nobody is passionate about grant applications, marking papers or handling difficult people. Moreover, working long hours does not scale: you can’t increase your output continuously.
Our productivity will keep improving. I can write software faster and better than ever. I can research prior work with ease. I can ask fancy mathematical questions on the Web and get answers in minutes. Instead of investing back this productivity into more silly work, we need to get smarter:
- Focus on the essential: programming great software, writing a fun book, a set of inspiring lecture notes or an insightful article.
- Automate, reduce or delegate. Reduce is best: doing fewer things is cool!
- A focus on money or on personal disputes makes you stupid. Yet that’s where success often takes you. Watch out!
- Airplanes pollute. Travel takes you away from your family. Cars pollute and make you fat. Do you need all that junk?