Art Of Money

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Not going to work has become somewhat ‘normal’ as I turn the corner towards the end of one month out of the rat race, but today I was thinking about what is different now than when I went to the office 5 days a week

Work 12 hour days — still the same.

Get up at 7a.m. — still the same.

Feel pressure to produce and perform — still the same.

Amount accomplished in a day — still the same.

So is anything different? Yes, my sense of freedom has expanded dramatically.

Now when you look at the things that are the same, you may be surprised, like I was that anything could change. Let’s deconstruct a little further.

What is different is just little things. I start work when I want rather than 8:15 each day, take breaks when I want rather than 10 and 3, I take lunch at about noon rather than 12-1 precisely. I don’t have to quickly close the browser when I’m watching a funny video and a co-worker or boss rambles into my cubicle. I don’t have to sit at my desk all day even if I would rather take my work to a café just to get a change of scenery.

You get the point I’m by now. Now don’t get me wrong, the place I worked was pretty good…it was not a bad place and my boss was the kind that never gave anyone any grief as long as they did their job. But it was still there, that awful feeling of being judged if you showed up late on a regular basis, and go work in a café, forget about it. If an executive walked by, you’d have hell to pay.

The funny thing is that these things don’t have any adverse affect on job performance, if anything I expect that there would be a positive correlation between a complete lack of structure in the workplace expectations and performance. If you’ve done any kind of decent recruiting job you’ve hired someone who understands responsibility they would probably become a better employee the more leash you gave them.

Now, if I slap on my employer hat, I know that it is easier said than done to trust your employees to that level. I cannot really speak from experience since I’ve always hired based on contract. It is a big leap of faith for an employer to let go of the rules.

The last thing that comes to mind is that it would be really fun, that kind of thing you do when you’ve won the lottery and no-one knows, is to just completely disregard the restrictive social norms of your workplace. Just act as if you were at home and, while maintaining your job responsibilities, just do completely as you please. Work in a café all morning, putting practice in the cubicle aisle, why not? Golfing on a nice day…you’ll make up the time in the evening. Would be a fun experiment to see how the
people around you react.

I’ll have to put it on my to do list for when I’m wealthy…get a job just to see if freedom can be maintained in a corporate environment [of course it's been done already].