So many of us talk about work being “crazy.” But what do we mean when we say that, and why do we often say it with a tinge of pride?
For an episode of Transform Your Workplace, I spoke with David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails web development framework, cofounder of project management software company Basecamp, and coauthor of New York Times bestseller Rework. His latest book, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, co-written with his Basecamp co-founder Jason Fried, tackles our cultural obsession with workaholicism and how it leads to extra-long work weeks.
“There are so many people today who can’t seem to get work done within 40 hours a week, or they don’t believe they can,” Heinemeier Hansson said. “So they end up working 60, 80, and in some extreme cases, 100 hours a week.”
“That’s just crazy,” he said. No matter how much energy and enthusiasm you think you’re bringing to all that work, and no matter how much you believe in the mission of your work, it’s just not healthy to spend that much time on it. Plus, doubling your hours at work doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doubling your value. “Oftentimes, that extra work is worth half as much because the quality of your ideas have a tendency to crater when you don’t have the time to recuperate,” he said. Put simply: we work less efficiently and make more mistakes when we overwork ourselves.
He believes that today’s “hustle mania” culture, as he called it, is what got us into this overworked place. “Everyone believes they have to be dedicating their entire lives, and all their waking hours, to the work, and that they have to crush it constantly. They believe they constantly have to chase more and more and more and hit goalposts every quarter or every month.”
But a lot of people don’t recognize this overworked culture as a bad thing. “Jason and I would ask people, ‘Hey, how’s work?’ and they would respond, ‘Oh, it’s crazy at work’ with a smirk as though that was a good thing, like a medal they hang around their neck.”
It doesn’t have to be that way, he said—and it’s better for employees and organizations if it isn’t. “You can work calmly, and that’s much nicer—not just for your health, for your sanity, but also for business and for making good products and bringing your creativity to work in a way that’s sustainable.”
To live out this vision at Basecamp, Heinemeier Hansson and Fried have implemented some unique processes. Here are some tips Heinemeier Hansson shared with me for creating a healthier workplace that discourages overworking.
Reconsider your organization’s goals, and aim for sustainability instead of constant growth.
“Our main goal is not to have goals,” he said. “We want a profitable, sustainable, healthy business, which isn’t the same as saying, ‘Oh, we need 30% year-over-year growth, or we need to hit these quarterly marks.’ You can also just reach a point and say, ‘This is where we want to be.’” Reaching a point of success that is sustainable, and choosing not to strive for more, is not a failure! Building maintainable operations and keeping employees engaged at that level is a form of success, too.
Redefine what you consider “a good day’s work,” and protect your employees’ time.
“Change your entire perspective of what is a good day’s work,” Heinemeier Hansson said. Then, think about how to build your operations to support that. Typically, a “good day’s work” requires “protecting the integrity of an hour,” as he put it, to allow for deeper, more diligent, more satisfying creative work. “An hour chopped into four pieces is just not the same as an hour working continuously. These 15-minute slots just don’t produce anything, and this is how a lot of people end up working 10, 12 hours a day, thinking at the end, ‘Wait, what did I get done?’”
Limiting the amount of meetings you schedule and encouraging employees to step away from email can help keep them in their deep work. The technology you implement has a major role in this, which is why he says you should also…
Rethink your workplace technology.
When chat technology came along, Heinemeier Hansson said, many businesses thought it would liberate their employees from email. But really, it became just another thing to divert attention from actual work. Many businesses have a tendency of idolizing new technology, hoping it will be a quick fix for every workplace dilemma. But “there are negative consequences from introducing new technology that we overlook in our enthusiasm for the new,” he said.
There are similar problems associated with shared calendars. If you want something from a colleague, you can just add a meeting with them to the organization’s calendar. “All of a sudden, you robbed Joe of this wonderful four hours he had in the morning, because now there’s that damn meeting at 10:30. So now he has an hour and a half before the meeting, and an hour and a half after. It’ll be harder for him to get into that deep, creative work that takes real engagement.”
Instead, at Basecamp, employees have to ask each other when they want to schedule meetings. They can’t do it automatically. It’s annoying, he says, and that’s the point.
“Anyone who tries to organize a meeting between four or five people quickly realizes ‘I don’t want to do this all the time.’ It’s almost impossible, right? It needs to be a pain in the ass to organize a meeting of five people, because if it is, there will be a lot fewer meetings of five people. That is not a bad thing.” It’s important to remember that an hour meeting with five people isn’t using up an hour of work time—it’s using up five hours. Before you schedule, think about whether that’s the best use of that time.
Internally, Basecamp also turns off the ability to see whether coworkers are online. “When the dot is green, what that actually means is not, ‘Oh, I’m sitting around waiting for you to interrupt me.’ It means ‘I’m here to do the work.’” Turning off that dot not only prevents workflow interruptions, but often results in better responses: people give more useful answers when they have more time to think before they reply. “And the fact is, most things are just not that urgent,” he added. Some employees instead hold “office hours,” where they are available for specific slots of time in the week for questions, so they aren’t open to interruptions all day long.
Model a healthy work-life balance from the top.
Work distractions bleed over into our personal lives—like people failing to take vacations, for example, to stay on top of their work. “Yes, there are occasionally crises and spikes in our work hours,” Heinemeier Hansson said, “but those should always be the exception.”
To prevent your employees from becoming workaholics, you have to model that balance yourself. “Workaholicism trickles down,” Heinemeier Hansson said. Managers and executive leadership should model their own work-life balance from the top of the organization. Otherwise, if employees see you working constantly, they’ll assume you want the same from them.
Consider offering more out-of-office benefits.
Many organizations offer benefits that keep employees in the office longer—things like free food, kegs of beer, and ping pong tables. But benefits, Heinemeier Hansson said, should actually benefit employees, not just entice them to stick around the office longer. “When you’re doing that, you’re actually just benefitting the organization. That’s not a benefit. That’s a trap.”
At Basecamp, benefits might include fresh produce, which encourages employees to go home and cook instead of eating all their meals at the office. They also offer funds for continued education, and not just in subjects that benefit the company. “We’ve had people learn how to play guitar,” he said.
And not only do they give generous time off for vacation, they help pay for the vacation itself. Every employee receives about $5,000 annually to spend on vacation. But they don’t get the cash otherwise—it has to be used on a vacation. While that may not be feasible for most organizations, the important thing is that employees know their vacation is there to be used, and that they won’t be looked down upon for taking a break and using it.
For more ideas, I highly recommend It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, or Heinemeier Hansson and Fried’s blog, SignalVNoise.com. Both are full of advice for keeping work from overtaking our lives, and for managing productive and healthy workplaces in general.