Working Hard: a bad thing?

[Gozu]

Hard Work should be defined doing the work the “right” way, whatever that entails for that specific job. Taking no detrimental shortcuts, but at the same time, being efficient.
[/QUOTE]

You’re quite right and you explain it very nicely. In my opinion, what you describe is work that a worker can be proud of.

I like “work to be proud of” or “good work” much, much better than “hard work”.

Do you concur?
Emphasis mine:

@Lustforlife

I sent my troops over the pub with the strict instructions not to get drunk

Can you imagine how much more morale and productivity would have risen if you had given them strict instructions to GET drunk?

Poverty would be a thing of the past.

[Der_Trihs]

@Mojo Pin

Still, wouldn’t the words “hard work” have intrinsic value to describe work that is hard?

Not really. Just because something is hard to do doesn’t mean that it’s worth doing, or that it should be hard in the first place. For example, it could be hard work in an evil cause. Or, it could be hard because the person running the business is one of Lust4Life’s “Factory Mentality” types, imposing useless busywork. Or, it could be hard because the owner is too cheap to buy the machines that would make it easier, and prefers to work people to exhaustion instead. Or any number of things.

Working hard can be a good thing, yes; or it can be stupid, a matter of victimization, or even evil. It’s all a matter of context; there’s nothing intrinsically good about it.

[cmyk]

@Gozu

You’re quite right and you explain it very nicely. In my opinion, what you describe is work that a worker can be proud of.

I like “work to be proud of” or “good work” much, much better than “hard work”.

Do you concur?

Yes, I do. Hard work should equal good work. If the worker starts slacking, it’s typically because he’s found some shortcut that allows the work to go by easier, but you end up with a poor or inferior result.

The worker should do the job correctly, producing good work and thereby have something to be proud of.

The busy work that others are talking about comes down to a more subjective version of the above. Too much busy work comes forth from poor management and leadership who don’t understand the true value of labor and that morale and downtime are things that are just as important as the work itself.

[Mojo_Pin]

@Der Trihs

Not really. Just because something is hard to do doesn’t mean that it’s worth doing, or that it should be hard in the first place. For example, it could be hard work in an evil cause. Or, it could be hard because the person running the business is one of Lust4Life’s “Factory Mentality” types, imposing useless busywork. Or, it could be hard because the owner is too cheap to buy the machines that would make it easier, and prefers to work people to exhaustion instead. Or any number of things.

Working hard can be a good thing, yes; or it can be stupid, a matter of victimization, or even evil. It’s all a matter of context; there’s nothing intrinsically good about it.

:rolleyes: It seems like you didn’t read the section you quoted–my only point was that whether “hard work” is a good or bad thing, we still need them words. I don’t understand why **Gozu **and others are on a vendetta against words–even if you stop calling work ‘hard’ there will still be ‘hard work’ that needs to be recognized as such, value judgments aside.

Case in point:

@Gozu

You’re quite right and you explain it very nicely. In my opinion, what you describe is work that a worker can be proud of. I like “work to be proud of” or “good work” much, much better than “hard work”. Do you concur?

Everybody but the masochists on this board will concur with you–that’s really no more meaningful than asking: “I like good movies better than bad movies, don’t you?” That shouldn’t mean we boycott the words ‘bad movie’ hoping they will go away if we call it something else. “Factory mentality” isn’t going to disappear unless we get to the heart of the issue (like inefficiencies in management). Nobody wants to do fruitless labor, and yet some people need to–are you going to tell a single mom washing dishes to drop her minimum wage job in favor of something she could be more proud of? All this “I only want to do things that are pleasant” talk means jack to someone working their ass off, hard, to get by–no matter how much jumping through hoops that may mean.

Can you imagine how much more morale and productivity would have risen if you had given them strict instructions to GET drunk?

Poverty would be a thing of the past.

I realize this is supposed to be funny, but just think for a second how badly this would fail.

[Der_Trihs]

@Mojo Pin

:rolleyes: It seems like you didn’t read the section you quoted–my only point was that whether “hard work” is a good or bad thing, we still need them words. I don’t understand why **Gozu **and others are on a vendetta against words–even if you stop calling work ‘hard’ there will still be ‘hard work’ that needs to be recognized as such, value judgments aside.

I have no idea what you are talking about. It’s not “words” that are the problem, it’s our valuation of hard work for it’s own sake. What it’s called is besides the point.

@Mojo Pin

:Case in point:
Everybody but the masochists on this board will concur with you–that’s really no more meaningful than asking: “I like good movies better than bad movies, don’t you?”

It’s not the same thing at all. You don’t see people saying that going to bad movies is a virtue, do you ? You do see people saying that hard work - even useless or counterproductive hard work - is a virtue though.

@Mojo Pin

: Nobody wants to do fruitless labor, and yet some people need to–are you going to tell a single mom washing dishes to drop her minimum wage job in favor of something she could be more proud of?

First, NO ONE needs to do “fruitless labor”; it is, by the definition of “fruitless”, useless and pointless. And second, what does being “proud of” it have to do with anything ? You seem to be arguing against positions people aren’t taking.

@Mojo Pin

:All this “I only want to do things that are pleasant” talk means jack to someone working their ass off, hard, to get by–no matter how much jumping through hoops that may mean.

:rolleyes: Way to completely miss the point. The point is that there is a lot of makework and unneccesarily hard work out there, and there’s nothing noble about working hard when you don’t need to. Despite what many people like to claim.

[UltraVires]

I think that it is implicit in the concept that “hard work is a virtue” that we mean work that serves a productive purpose. If someone spends 14 hour days digging holes and filling them in again over and over, I don’t know of anyone who considers that a positive thing.

[msmith537]

In our society, there are all kinds of jobs and all kinds of work. The harder and smarter you work preparing yourself for the working world, the more choices you have in deciding where and how you work. A ditchdigger probably works a lot harder than I do as a middle manager in a Fortune 500 company (at least physically). However because I worked harder educating and preparing myself, I have much more flexibility and can take a job where I can work harder using my mind.

Theoretically, by working harder, you can better avoid the types of jobs where you are doing busywork, pointless labor or unfullfilling tasks.

Of course there is a bit of fallacy in that. All work tends to suck in different ways. That’s why they have to pay people to do it.

Also there is a problem caused by income disparity. It is demoralizing working for a boss who has a significantly higher standard of living than you. One begins to wonder why they are working so hard. Is it for myself and my benefit or is it so some rich guy can add an extension to his already giant house?

[Gozu]

@Mojo Pin

“Factory mentality” isn’t going to disappear unless we get to the heart of the issue (like inefficiencies in management). Nobody wants to do fruitless labor, and yet some people *need to[/I

Oh, quite, I am merely positing that a change of attitude towards work might be in order at some point, possibly within our children or grandchildren’s lifetimes.

I’m looking at the world, and in the the last 3 decades I have noticed trends and they raise endless maybes and “what if” questions in my mind*. I don’t want to stray offtopic but to expand on something I mentionned earlier:

-Food output has exceeded global needs significantly and the trend will likely continue.
-Transportation and communication networks are steadily growing and improving.

The idea is that humanity’s body is getting enough food and that the nerves are growing thicker, longer and are becoming more sensitive. With internet, ubiquitous video and camera phones and a culture of sharing and gossipping. It becomes harder everyday to get away with something that irks many.

Troublesome acts become more disruptive and annoying the more finely-tuned humanity’s body becomes. We want everyone to get the best possible education so we may discover more gems like einsteins, leipzigs and Avicennas. We want everyone to be as physically and mentally “healthy” as can be so that they don’t hurt others through bad decisions and so they stay productive. We want everybody to be happy so that morale, enthusiasm and efficiency will be as high as is achievable.

A utopic goal to be sure, but the transcendental goal of mankind is to create a specie-centric utopia. No reason to stop after agriculture, roads, cars and computers.

As manual labor and physically hard work lose importance, a major goal to harness our greatest asset, brainpower, will be to make work as challenging and fun as each person needs it to be. I am entirely clueless as if and how it’ll happen, but here is a very entertaining video that talks about harnessing human brainpower that I heartily recommend. Skip to 1min30s to bypass the boring intro.

Luis Von Ahn on google video

*I am endlessly surprised that other, much smarter, better educated and eloquent members and guests keep indulging what I sometimes think of as “mental diarrhea”.

[msmith537]

@Gozu

As manual labor and physically hard work lose importance, a major goal to harness our greatest asset, brainpower, will be to make work as challenging and fun as each person needs it to be. I am entirely clueless as if and how it’ll happen, but here is a very entertaining video that talks about harnessing human brainpower that I heartily recommend. Skip to 1min30s to bypass the boring intro.

Well that’s ultimately the goal. To use technology and mechanization to minimize the time we humans need to spend on boring, monotonous, repetetive or dangerous tasks so we can focus on stuff we find meaningfull and fullfilling.

[Ale]

@cmyk

Yes, I do. Hard work should equal good work. If the worker starts slacking, it’s typically because he’s found some shortcut that allows the work to go by easier, but you end up with a poor or inferior result.

Nonsense, or at least not necesarily true. In some areas of my job I can do in one day what others take a week and end up with a better result. There is such a thing as talent and skill; burning out the midnight oil because you are slow or not particularly efficient at what you do is not automatically a commendable thing because you´re hard working.

[cmyk]

@Ale

Nonsense, or at least not necesarily true. In some areas of my job I can do in one day what others take a week and end up with a better result. There is such a thing as talent and skill; burning out the midnight oil because you are slow or not particularly efficient at what you do is not automatically a commendable thing because you´re hard working.

My argument isn’t inherently time-based. Go ahead and crank your job out in a day, if that’s what it takes to do it right. I said “easier” not “faster”.

.

[ITR_champion]

@FriarTed

American Puritans did not burn anyone accused of witchcraft.

They hanged them.

Of the twenty killed at the Salem witch trials, nineteen were hanged and one was crushed to death with stones. However, given the tens of millions of Puritans who have lived in America, Gozu’s accusation would be unjustified even if they had used burning at the stake.