It's urgent to make sense of overwork

 A rose by any other name may smell assweet but ‘overwork’ smells much sweeter when named ‘sense of urgency’

I wasplaying tennis with a friend, an entrepreneur. During every changeover, hewould sit down and get engrossed with his phone. After being made to wait threeor four times, I asked him what was so urgent.

“Onemail with my sales manager in India,” he replied crisply: “I reply to everyemail within 20 minutes of getting it.”

“Butit’s 7:30 am on a Saturday morning! 5 am in India!”

“Doesn’tmatter,” he said. “We attend to everything with a sense of urgency. I’veinstilled a 24/7 work culture.” The pride in his voice, cloying andself-righteous, overflowed into the tennis court.

Bydisplaying a keen sense of urgency, he was not really attending to work inbetween tennis; he was playing tennis in between his work. 

Likehim, many of us take our work with us everywhere – to the tennis court, cinema,food court, even bed. We check our emails just before sleeping and immediatelyon waking up (even if it’s for a midnight toilet visit). Work consumes everyhour of our day, every fibre of our being. 

THEGLAMOUR OF A 24/7 CULTURE

It was notmeant to be like this. In a 1930 essay, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a 15-hour week 100 yearslater. But the workweek has only grown since then. Mr Keynes rightlyprophesised the advance in technology and leaps in productivity that couldrender shorter working hours, but grossly underestimated mankind’sresourcefulness in grappling with the problem. “If machines do much of what wedid yesterday – we’ll do other stuff today!” seems to be our defiant responseto Mr Keynes.

Thirty years ago, the New York Times lamented the increase in working hours andcorresponding reduction in leisure, and every passing year has featured thesame story. In Oct 2019, just months before Covid-19 ravaged the world, The Guardian cited overwork as a major cause of burnout.

Whatdrives people to work so much? It’s “their own ambitions refracted through theexpectations of their employers”, suggests James Suzman in his book exploring the history of work. In a similar vein, a BBC article talks about how “Billionaire techentrepreneurs advocate sacrificing sleep so that people can ‘change theworld’”; and how, having bought the argument, we “devote ourselves to work andglamourise long-hours”.

But inrecent years the glitz of overwork is being dimmed by a counter movement:work-life balance. Op-eds , TED talks, business literature and mainstream news are all exhorting people to live a moreholistic life, with work occupying a part, not dominating its entirety. In thisenvironment, it is unbecoming for chief executives to overtly demand overwork,and embarrassing for employees to wear it as a badge of honour.

AUSEFUL EUPHEMISM

Intypical fashion, business leaders found the answer to retain the allure of longhours – in business jargon. ‘Overwork’ sounds harsh, exhausting and degrading.‘A sense of urgency’ sounds stylish, statesmanlike and purposeful. And when itis emblazoned on corporate walls with the inspirational image of a sprintercutting the tape after a 100-metre dash, featured in CEO townhall addresses, andwritten into performance appraisals, it acquires an ethereal, spiritual,quality.

A

s ayoung executive, I was once told that, by taking twoweeks to start work on an idea that our managing director had thrown our way, I had not exhibited an appropriatesense of urgency.

 

“But that idea is for next year,” I said.

 

“So?” My manager looked puzzled.

 

“So it’s not urgent!” I said.

Shaking his head and adopting a fatherlytone, he explained how a sense of urgency could work for me, career-wise,especially if it were accompanied by fire in the belly.

“People who bring transformative changehave courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.” saysMalcolm Gladwell. As a bestselling author – of Outliers, The Tipping Point andBlink ­– Mr Gladwell’s words carry the weight of gospel to many. But hisstatement, while true, is grossly misleading. He has clubbed two irrefutabletraits of change agents – courage and creative thinking – with a dubious third,one that is equally exhibited by successful change agents and resounding flops.I personally know entrepreneurs who pursued ideas without merit, but pursuedthem with a reverberating sense of urgency – and the only transformative changethey effected was a downward one of their bank balances. 

To paraphrase Mr Gladwell with a sportsanalogy, I could say, “Tennis players who rise to the pinnacle have immensetalent, an unwavering will to win and a decent pair of tennis shoes.”

THECORONA-SENSE OF URGENCY

Underthe guise of a senseof urgency theindoctrination of excessive work into our culture was complete well before Covid-19hit us and irrevocably changed the world we knew, taking a tragic toll on livesand livelihoods, shrinking the economy, slowing businesses, and forcing us towork from home. In its midst, one might have expected some respite in workinghours (for those not in healthcare).

But thereverse happened. The corporation’s answer to slowing consumer demand,disrupted supply chains and travel cessation? Work harder! The World EconomicForum reported that Covid-19 caused up to a 40% increase working hours in somecountries. At home, reported in this paper last month, one in two Singaporeans has worked more hours since theonset of Covid-19; and many have added two hours to their workday.

Workingfrom home has actually facilitated this by obliterating the office hourconstraint. Like bananas into smoothies, days blend into nights and weekdaysinto weekends. “When the business slows down, we go faster,” leaders seem tosuggest. “And since you work in your pyjamas anyway, why stop just because it’s8 pm? Or a balmy Sunday morning?”

But the toll of overwork is now provingworse than just stress and burnout. Recent research suggests that around three-quarters of amillion people die every year due to it. So, business leaders, please stopdemanding a sense of urgency from your people; in fact eliminate thephrase from your business lexicon. And do it with a genuine sense ofurgency. Otherwise the next time an employee tells you, “Excessive work iskilling me”, they may not be speaking figuratively.

This article first appeared in TheStrait Times, Singapore, on 1st May 2022