Cows vs. Lions
“We’d like to view the world as linear, which is, I’m gonna put in eight hours of work, I’m gonna get back eight hours of output, right? Doesn’t work that way. The guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me. How much output is he getting?… Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in. The right way to work is like a lion.” — Naval Ravikant
Entrepreneur and Investor, Naval Ravkiant thinks the reality of working a 9–5, 40 hour work week is a myth and I totally agree.
He uses the comparison between a cow and lion, when describing how we should work. He juxtaposes the cow, who grazes all day at a monotonous pace with the lion who spends most of their time resting and engages in occassional bursts of activity.
The cow is a representation of the old world of work, filled with drudgery and routine. Where you work all day, engage in useless activity rather than value adding contributions. Where the real work took place for maybe 2–4 hours in the day, and the rest of the time is filled with imitation. The lion is the antithesis of the cow. They spend up to 21 hours each day resting and sleeping. But exert maximum energy once a target is identified. Their results and approach, allows them to rest.
The way to get more out of our work is by accepting that we humans and not machines. Despite how society has established that we should somehow model a machine’s output.
In our new world comprised of knowledge workers, we need to figure out how to do less with more occasions of intensity.
How the richest man in America worked
“Your always-busy man accomplishes little” — Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a hard worker, but not for his whole life. He actually once described himself as a ‘shirker.’
Hard to believe one of the wealthiest men in history described himself as lazy, but he did. In an interview he said: “I’m here because I shirked: did less work, lived more in the open air. enjoyed the open air, sunshine and exercise.”
At 27 as an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Carnegie managed to obtain a special leave of absence so that for 3 months of the year he could vacation in Scotland and Europe. 3 years later at age 30, he left his business interests in the hands of his brother Tom and toured Europe for a year. Sometime later, he took another year off to travel around the world.
These instances only take into account his long scheduled breaks. But Carnegie approached his work day in the same fashion. He capped his work at 2–3 hours a day (and he grew his net worth to over $400 billion). The mills operated 24 hours a day whereas he did 2 hours.
He wasn’t alone. Prior to wealth, Joseph Kennedy would work hard for 9 months and then chill for 3 months in Palm Beach, Florida. John D. Rockefeller perhaps the most successful businessman of all time was the same. These three men were carving out the world in which so many of us inhabit today.
Carnegie, Kennedy and Rockefeller had all understood a tide of change was on the horizon and chose to ride the wave. The tide was capitalism. They understood the potential of what capitalism could mean for work. The industrial revolution meant that there would be a detachment between labour and capital. This meant that a Carnegie, could capitalise on his lazy nature and do what he really wanted to — nothing.
The world view on productivity is desperately lagging behind. A lot of us still work like machines. We assume that if we sit down for 8 hours of the day we will produce 8 hours worth of work. This simply isn’t true and crushes the room that we need for creativity.
Carnegie and co knew what their product was. Like most leaders of an organisation, it’s not what they do with their hands but what is going on in their mind. Their product was decisions. That’s where most of their energy was spent.
In the 1800s jobs were labour intensive. In 1870, 46% of jobs were in agriculture. Today, thirty-eight percent of jobs are now designated as “managers, officials, and professionals.” These are decision-making jobs. Another 41% are service jobs that often rely on your thoughts as much as your actions.
Productivity simply does not look like what it used to. Work today has been redesigned to require more thought, imagination and calculation than ever before. The modern knowledge worker model is more Carnegie than Chaplin. You sprint, rest and reassess. What this also means is you may spend a lot of time doing things which don’t look like you’re being productive, but you are.
A Stanford study that showed walking increases creativity by 60%. Albert Einstein agreed saying: I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.
As knowledge workers we must be strong advocates for leisure, because it is essential for rejuvenation and the cultivation of a clear, strategic mind.
Carnegie didn’t stop working after his two-hour workday, he complemented finishing his tasks in a timely fashion with reading, thinking, and engaging with ideas and people that inspired him.
The Lion Approach
“Eat like a lion, work like a lion, feel like a lion, live like a lion” — Naval Ravikant
Shortly after this extended vacation, a Pennsylvania businessman mentioned to Carnegie that he was always sure to be in his office by “seven in the morning.” Carnegie remarked laughingly:
You must be a lazy man if it takes you ten hours to do a day’s work.’ What I do,’ he said, is to get good men, and I never give them orders. My directions seldom go beyond suggestions. Here in the morning I get reports from them. Within an hour I have disposed of everything, sent out all of my suggestions, the day’s work is done, and I am ready to go out and enjoy myself.”
I’m convinced that much of the world’s institutions have been set up in a way that applies talent ineffectively. For the organisation, they get less out of the individual and for the individual they work ceaselessly. Both of which are seriously self-defeating as it saps the creativity required in business.
Americans, he remarked to his cousin, “were the saddest-looking race … Life is so terribly earnest here. Ambition spurs us all on, from him who handles the spade to him who employs thousands. We know no rest. … I hope Americans will find some day more time for play, like their wiser brethren upon the other side.”
I’m not pretending that we can forgo every piece of work. The idea is to combine your necessary activities, like admin, at a non-maximum effort with your high leverage activities, like recording a podcast, at a higher intensity.
Unfortunately we have been hard-wired to judge a worker by their ability to grind instead of their results. But as the global economy increasingly shifts towards knowledge work, it’s time to reconsider this approach. In this context, work that may initially appear lazy might actually be more effective than what meets the eye.
Creativity needs nurturing and sometimes that is by doing something completely different or nothing at all.
