Issue 26 - Experimenting

Hello and welcome to my weekly email newsletter, Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five, where I share five things I’m enjoying, thinking about, and find interesting. A warm welcome to new readers and I hope you enjoy issue 26.

Here’s my Friday Five this week.

1. What I’m Reading

The Moral Case for Working Less. Article by Simone Stolzoff in The Atlantic.

In his article, an adapted excerpt from his debut book The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work, author Simone Stolzoff explores the often challenging balance between work and leisure.

Stolzoff focuses on the story of Josh Epperson, a 40-year-old who has abandoned the conventional work grind. Adopting what he calls “The Experiment,” Epperson sticks to three principles: he only accepts meaningful work, he charges a premium hourly rate of $130, and he caps his workweek at 20 hours. Rather than pushing for more financial gain, he prioritises time, earning about $100,000 annually by working 10 to 15 hours a week.

Epperson once believed more hours equated to greater success. However, his philosophy shifted dramatically after pivotal experiences like the FEAST art project and his departure from a high-paying job. His change mirrors Iceland's recent four-day workweek trial from 2015 to 2019. Those findings revealed that shorter work hours, without reduced pay, enhanced productivity and broke the counterproductive cycle of overwork and fatigue that many workers globally face.

Epperson's core belief is the inherent value of genuine leisure, a contrast to the prevailing view of leisure as a mere productivity enhancer. It's not about unplugging to recharge for work, but embracing leisure because it’s good for us. As Stolzoff suggests, working less doesn't just make us better workers; it allows us to be more complete humans.

Read the article here and share your thoughts.

2. What I’m Watching

American Factory. Documentary by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert.

In post-Industrial Ohio in the United States, another experiment took place. In 2008, the closure of a General Motors assembly plant in Dayton saw the layoff of 2,400 workers, severely impacting the local economy. Eight years later, the Chinese billionaire Cao Dewang reopened the site with his company, Fuyao Glass. They reemployed many of the original U.S. workers, while repatriating around 200 of its Chinese workers to help with setup and training.

Dewang wanted to reshape American perceptions of the Chinese, showing that the two countries could work in harmony after all. To bridge the cultural gap, newly relocated Chinese workers underwent training to help them better interact with their American counterparts. Their joint experiences are the focal point of the film and it’s compelling.

American Factory, an Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, uncovers the complex realities of the vast cultural differences between China and the United States. The approach that made Fuyao effective in China, in which workers are seen more as cogs in a machine than as individuals, and where overtime and working on weekends is considered mandatory, contrasts bluntly with American working standards. It’s testimony to the adage that water and oil don’t mix.

The filmmakers take an unobtrusive approach, letting the events unfold naturally without telling you how to feel. They don't champion one approach over another but instead illustrate the multifaceted nature of economic change, as well as the challenges and changing attitudes of globalisation, unionisation, and workers' rights, all framed within the evolving dynamics between the two economic giants of our time.

3. What I’m Contemplating

“Productivity” is a term that's taken on new dimensions in our tech-driven era. In a recent episode of his Deep Questions podcast, Cal Newport discussed “The Failure of Cybernetic Productivity.” Newport defines “cybernetic productivity” as a productivity approach that relies heavily on digital tools to automate and speed up the non-essential aspects of work.

In the past two decades, we've often equated “productivity” with this tech-dependent approach, a trend that advances in AI have accelerated. But Newport argues that this “cybernetic” strategy isn't truly serving us. Instead of feeling accomplished, we often feel overwhelmed. This is primarily because of the “infinite buffer effect” in knowledge work, where there is an endless list of tasks we could be doing, and as soon as we clear some away, more appear.

While these digital tools make us more efficient at dealing with routine tasks, more work simply falls in from the infinite buffer to fill the void, much of it of a similar nature. We’re now incredibly efficient, but left drained and distanced from truly impactful work. This is a hard cycle to break.

Newport’s solution, and something I’m an advocate of too, is “slow productivity”. This approach encourages a focus on fewer tasks, working at your natural pace, and prioritising quality over everything else.

It’s time for organisations to rethink and experiment how they assign work to their employees.

Watch the clip on YouTube and share your thoughts.

4. A Quote to note

“Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, and integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

- Gary Keller

5. A Question for you

If you could design an ideal balance between work and leisure based on your current needs and desires, what would it look like?

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Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

James

The photo used in this week’s edition is ‘Mill Scene’ (1965) by British painter Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887–1976). Copyright: The Estate of L.S. Lowry. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2023. Photo credit: The Lowry Collection, Salford