Prescription Instructions
- The magic pill must be taken, by managers, once per week, on Monday.
- The magic pill has no effect on the manager during the week until 40 work hours have been logged.
- Once 40 work hours have been logged, the magic pill prevents the manager from thinking about work activities.
- Blackberries and remote email are considered work activities by the magic pill.
- If the manager persists in thinking about work activities, the magic pill will shut down conscious thought and make the subject sleep for a temporary period (naptime).
- In most cases, the magic pill has been shown to change the work habits of managers, who now know they must be effective within 40 work hours per week.
- In clinical trials, in some cases, side effects of the magic pill have improved family and social activities.
Think about this magic pill. If you took the magic pill, what habits would you change to become more effective?
I’m going to commit to taking this pill each day through next Friday to see what happens. I know my wife will be shocked! (in a good way). I suspect it will help me delegate better to my team, focus on what’s most important, and e-mail responses will be shorter while still conveying the message.
I am going to modify the pill slightly to allow study time outside of the 40 hours – IT Security changes so quickly I find myself studying at least 20 hours a week in addition to all of the work hours. I hunger for knowledge so the “studying” feels more like “fun” than “work” anyway.
What I like best is the pill is 40 hours per week not 8 hours per day. That adds awesome flexibility such as a 4 day workweek sometimes! Thank you Tom!
At our credit union if you are a manager when you go on vacation if you check your e-mail you are subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination. We take vacation very seriously at our shop. Do people live to work or work to live? When you die will they put on your tombstone that you were a dedicated worker bee? Life is too short to be tethered to a job.
Mike, thanks for sharing your experiment for the next couple of weeks. The magic pill was inspired by Dan Wertenberg, a fellow Vistage Chair.
Evan,
The hat trick is finding a job where the work is something in which you place a high value. You will know this work because it will attract your interest, passion. The tether becomes a connection to meaning. Life is still too short.
Tom,
Give me a break. Why is the 40 hour work week even desirable. Historically, this is a level in which the workers negotiated with management the lowest amount of work possible through collective bargaining. Do we want to become France in which little if no work get done and the USA becomes a second rate country.
There is a reason we will loose our competitiveness in the global economy when work becomes a distraction to play.
Art,
It’s been an active morning of comments on this subject of the Magic Pill. The Magic Pill was created for those managers who work 80 hours a week and only create 10 hours of productivity. They confuse busywork with effectiveness. Or use an 80 hour time card as a substitute for effectiveness. It’s not that they need to work more, they have to change what they do.
Sometimes, in the midst of a really busy week, I stop and ask myself, what would “Art” do? As I examine my own busy activity, I realize I am putting in hours that are only minimally effective. To get better results, I have to change what I am doing. Remarkably, I find more effective activity often results in fewer actual hours. It’s the difference between spinning your wheels or gaining traction.
Art…it seems we’ve already lost our competitiveness in the global economy. And it wasn’t due to distractions of playtime by the workforce. Perhaps an acceptance of the fact that life is for living AND for working would have KEPT us a global model for success.