The Productivity Debate Begins
March 21st, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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The hard work vs. laziness productivity blog showdown between myself and Fred Gratzon has begun at Slacker Manager. Brendon Connelly first invited each of us to provide our own definitions of certain terms: success, hard work, passion, happiness, laziness, productivity, work ethic, efficiency, and motivation.
Here is my response, and here is Fred’s.
It seems that the difference between Fred’s philosophy and mine goes beyond semantics. Perhaps the key difference is how we define going with the flow of what Fred refers to as “Mother Nature.” He explains that as physics itself always goes with the flow of nature and takes the path of least resistance, then we humans will achieve the greatest success when we align ourselves with these natural laws.
Fred’s response sounds beautiful. I’ve read many books that espouse a similar philosophy. But I don’t adopt this philosophy as my own because in the long run I believe it will ultimately self-destruct.
Here’s why:
Where will going with the flow of nature take us? What will laziness get us? Do you actually know where this path will lead? Not just us as individuals but all of humanity? Given the status of our planet and the history of our world as we appear to understand it, where will this philosophy take us?
Where has it already lead most of the other species on our planet? Where did it lead the dinosaurs?
You see, if you want to accept the philosophy of going with the flow and living in accordance with nature, then you must accept the whole package, which includes giving up control of your life to natural processes outside your control. You must trust that the path of least resistance will lead you somewhere good.
This is an easy (and very tempting) philosophy to adopt. And if you don’t mind becoming extinct, then by all means go for it. But if you’ve fallen in love with humanity’s potential as I have, then perhaps you’d prefer that we don’t drown in our own pollution and go the way of the dinosaur. Maybe it’s worth the effort to keep this wonderful and creative species alive and see just how far we can go.
We humans are the only earth species to have left our planet. We visited the moon. Isn’t that absolutely incredible? And we busted our butts to do it. Think about all we’ve accomplish as humans and how hard many of us worked to achieve these goals. What we’ll accomplish over the next 100 years is astonishing to even contemplate. I for one am glad to live at this time in history, and I’m grateful for all the hard work of previous humans to get us to this point.
To me this is not a time in history to be lazy, complacent, and cowardly. Humanity has some big challenges on the horizon. So let’s get busy and tackle them with our intelligence, our courage, and our capacity to work hard. Stop bemoaning the existence of these challenges and wishing we could all take the easy way out. If you want the easy way out, there are plenty of drugs to choose from.
I’d rather participate actively instead of passively letting life slip away. If that requires some effort and hard work and facing down fears, then so be it. I’ll pay that price willingly. I won’t go to my grave thinking of the people I might have helped but didn’t because I was too lazy and fearful to make the effort.
Hard work IS painful when life is devoid of purpose. But when you live for something greater than yourself and the gratification of your own ego, then hard work becomes a labor of love. Who wants to work hard for money? You want to dedicate your whole life to collecting smelly pieces of paper with pictures of dead people on them? What kind of pathetic motivation is that? Of course you’ll cringe at the thought of hard work if that’s all you care about. But there are so many more interesting things to live for that make hard work worthwhile. And this requires getting out of your own little shell of personal gripes and fears and taking a look at the rest of the world and asking yourself, “How can I contribute?”
As Rabindranath Tagore wrote:
I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold, service was joy.
March 21st, 2005 at 10:16 am
Wow, the amount of irresponsible assumptions, anecdotal evidence, and giant sweeping generalizations, is enough to convince anyone of anything. Ooops, I’m sorry. I mean to say “is enough to convince any stupid person of anything” This all might be interesting if done responsibly, but then again the winner is obvious.
March 21st, 2005 at 11:39 am
I’m not certain that allusion to the laws of physics makes sense in this context- life itself is counter-entropic, and is able to be so because it uses a lot of energy, i.e. does a lot of work. Fred’s prescription seems to mean that we should follow the gradient, like water current, or gravity, to the point of least potential energy. This works until the natural gradients are exhausted, unless, like living things, we have some mechanism for transforming the energy in the environment into energy we can use, specifically to work against the natural direction of things, which is to tend to disorder and decay.
To do anything other than maximize entropy, it takes lots of organization and structure and clever energy use. Which, perhaps, is what you were saying.
March 21st, 2005 at 11:42 am
Well I read the two responses. I was under the impression that this was going to be a civil debate. What happened?
March 21st, 2005 at 12:05 pm
I think by referencing the laws of physics he was just saying “When you’re doing something, seek the path of least resistance.”
I really don’t think the both of you are saying anything terribly different. I see Gratzon as saying “Avoid everything or at least as much as possible that doesn’t appeal to you so you’re happier with what you’re doing.” and I see you as saying “Try and do what you want to do so it’s more fulfilling, satisfying, and makes you happier, but don’t quit when something distasteful rears its head, push on.”
Gratzon, I think, is intentionally structuring his language so people will debate with him.
Here’s the thing I see as the real core problem that nobody talks about: When you’re stuck doing something you really hate and don’t see the point of it any longer, how do you change your situation so you’re back on track to fulfilling a purpose you like and being happier?
March 21st, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Danno: Do what David Allen says. Ask yourself “Why am I doing this in the first place?”
If you truly don’t see the point any longer, then make the decision to stop doing it and replace it with something that does have a point. For me, I recently decided not to register for grad school classes for the coming quarter. I realized that grad school just doesn’t make sense for me right now. I finished the last quarter mainly because other people had an investment in my education (namely my parents), but otherwise I simply decided “No more”.
So these coming weeks will find me dedicating to clarifying what exactly I want to do. I used to have the excuse that I couldn’t do things because of school. I don’t have that excuse anymore. Now I’m in the spotlight, and I have to make it count. What other choice do I have?
March 21st, 2005 at 1:16 pm
Yeah, Danno, how do you that? You just bite the bullet and do it.
March 21st, 2005 at 2:00 pm
It’s not quite so easy for people who have outstanding social obligations.
I’m not saying I have an answer, I’m probablly not smart enough to come up with a really good one. Heck, I don’t even know if there IS a universal answer, or something that can roughly be generalized.
March 21st, 2005 at 2:44 pm
After I’ve read articles from Steve and the other guy..and the comments from lazy guy which better doesn’t do anything, so he can have his “freedom”..yes great excuse for doing nothing useful. If we are talking about “laws of nature”…well, what about the law about action vs. reaction? If you act, you get reaction. That’s very universal law. You piss off someone, he will piss you or someone else, because he is angry. Or he just will leave it for himself, so he will get depressed. You acted and the universe will make it so the reaction WILL happen, somehow, someway. You eat, your body gets energy. You train, you get stronger. You kick a ball, it flies and you score. You are trying to achieve something, you get results. What would happen if you were just inactive and going “with the flow of nature”? You would probably die very soon-of course in extreme case. If you act, you can make something happen-you control your life, but it’s up to you how much. Everyone can force himself to get food, not everyone can force himself to start a business. There’s a balance that suits differently for everyone. Now let me state this important thing-each of those philosophies is important. I just don’t like the extremes of each(complete laziness vs. complete workholism). If there wouldn’t be people going “with the flow”(those who don’t take too much action), there wouldn’t be people who sacriface themselfs for the goals of other people, for those who are temped to make a difference. At least till the time we have robots realising our goals for us;) I believe in the law of action and reaction.
March 21st, 2005 at 3:17 pm
IMHO, Steve’s definitely winning the debate so far.
I know this debate is supposed to be relatively informal, but does Fred even know the general rules of debate? Or was he too lazy to figure them out?
Fred was too lazy to even provide his own definitions of terms and he just accepted Steve’s definitions, avoiding the so-called “punishment” of going through the effort of laying the groundwork for his own argument. Which by itself is totally fine. But then Fred made his argument in total contradiction to the definitions (”hard work”, “lazyness”, etc.) he just accepted from Steve a second ago.
March 21st, 2005 at 5:25 pm
Danno asked:
“Here’s the thing I see as the real core problem that nobody talks about: When you’re stuck doing something you really hate and don’t see the point of it any longer, how do you change your situation so you’re back on track to fulfilling a purpose you like and being happier?” and “It’s not quite so easy for people who have outstanding social obligations.”
I think Steve’s Dexterity.com article “Burning the Bridges” addresses this pretty well.
March 21st, 2005 at 5:29 pm
This was one of the questions I answered in detail for the next round of Q&A. Look for it in Tuesday’s debate update on http://www.slackermanager.com.
March 21st, 2005 at 9:31 pm
How about this…
Steve is focusing on how you get there (hard work), while Fred is focusing on the goal (doing less work.)
Farming is hard work. So you develop better methods of agriculture (also hard work - possibly even harder) but it makes life easier for you. What do you sing the praises of - hard work or laziness?
March 22nd, 2005 at 1:31 am
I think one fundamental distinction between the two contestants is whether they see humans as part of nature or not. Steve seems to assume that humans have to fight against nature because “going with the flow of nature” would lead us to extinction. Personally, I don’t see any difference between humanity and nature, in fact, humans are nature as much as anything else that lives on our planet. So fighting against nature means fighting oneself.
This whole discussion reminds me of western philosophy against eastern. Western people tend to assume humans to be thrown into a hostile environment (i.e. nature) where eastern people think of humans born out of nature.
“To me this is not a time in history to be lazy, complacent, and cowardly.”
“You see, if you want to accept the philosophy of going with the flow and living in accordance with nature, then you must accept the whole package, which includes giving up control of your life to natural processes outside your control.”
Steve, you say being lazy means the same as being cowardly. At the same time, you are afraid of giving up control and living in accordance to the flow of (your) nature. Personally, I think allowing oneself to be lazy and giving up control to your very own nature is more brave than fighting your fear with hard work all the time.
“We humans are the only earth species to have left our planet. We visited the moon. Isn’t that absolutely incredible? … What we’ll accomplish over the next 100 years is astonishing to even contemplate.”
Humans are at the same time the only species that know what hard work is. No other living entity works hard on this planet. There’re species that live on this earth for millions of years and will survive us for a longer period of time without ever working hard.
March 22nd, 2005 at 7:31 am
I do of course see humans as a part of nature. To think otherwise would be foolish.
However, even though we are a part of nature, we needn’t be victims of nature. We have the ability to use our consciousness to direct our own lives and not live merely as passive unconscious beings. This is what I mean as the difference between going with the flow (unconscious living) vs. driving your life (conscious living).
Human beings have evolved to the point where we need not merely turn our lives over to the forces of nature. We are now co-creators with nature. We have become a force of nature ourselves — that’s the power of our own consciousness. Look at what a single human being can achieve today through the full application of their conscious will. If one person became totally committed to it, s/he could redirect the course of all life on this planet and even alter the course of nature itself. Many people have already done this, for good or ill. This is far more significant than what a single ape can achieve.
Of course with this power of consciousness comes tremendous responsibility. To shirk that responsibility and sink back into a lower level of unconscious living, such as animals do, is cowardly. It means choosing to live as a mouse instead of as a man.
For even more on this subject, read The Courage to Live Consciously.
And an outstanding book on this subject is Conscious Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard.
March 22nd, 2005 at 7:48 pm
“However, even though we are a part of nature, we needn’t be victims of nature.”
You havent truly accepted you are part of nature else this statement wouldnt arise.
“We are now co-creators with nature”
This is unfortunately an arrogant statement. At what scale? Can we create a galaxy? Or even bacteria? We are just sampling nature and manipulating it but pretend to understand it completely and marvel at our power to change it whilst nature is truly unknowable. The wisdom is truly understanding it and not trying to act as if we can somehow change it.
March 22nd, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Co-creation is a matter of degree, and our ability to co-create continues to evolve rapidly, massively so over the past several decades. Can we create a bacteria? Yes, not from atomic scratch just yet, but we can consciously replicate them and engineer new ones that have never previously existed. Can we create other new species? Yes, already done via genetic engineering; many are being sold in supermarkets. Can we wipe out existing species? Yes, already done. Can we alter weather patterns by our actions? Yes, done.
We literally possess the power to move mountains.
What makes this a co-creative situation is that we can choose to do these things consciously. While we exist as a part of nature and are subject to its processes, we also have the ability to act upon those processes. It’s as if humanity is becoming a self-aware part of nature, like a computer program capable of modifying its own code. We already possess the ability to modify our own genetic code to a fairly significant degree. And our co-creative powers continue to increase year after year; in fact, the rate of increase is accelerating.
What’s crucial to the success of this evolutionary process is that our consciousness must evolve as well. Otherwise, there’s tremendous risk of co-creation becoming ever more powerful co-destruction. We’ve already sent most of the other species on this planet into complete extinction during our tenure here. If too many of us continue to live unconsciously over the next several decades, our species may not survive either; the degree of environmental destruction may become too great to reverse (and some scientists believe we’ve already past that point). The question is whether our consciousness can evolve fast enough for us to assume enough direct control over these natural processes to correct the present imbalances which threaten our survival. This doesn’t mean we must biologically evolve per se; it means our noosphere (our evolving knowledge and collective abilities) must evolve to the point where we can harness the needed solutions. Fortunately the noosphere evolves far faster than the biosphere (i.e. our knowledge evolves faster than our bodies).
The good news is that there are now groups of people around the globe dedicating themselves to consciously directing our evolution to do whatever it takes to ensure that we succeed. One example is http://www.evolve.org, and there are many more.
March 27th, 2005 at 3:28 am
“Personally I’m more passionate about making love than I am about giving speeches, but two kids is enough for me.”
That’s too good not to have been stolen from one of your speeches.
March 27th, 2005 at 10:45 am
Glad you liked the line, but I just made it up for that Q&A post. It does sound like a good line for opening a speech though, doesn’t it? At least for a certain type of audience….