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| Thread: "Hard" work |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · NEXT» |
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Doomforge
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posted January 17, 2014 12:22 PM |
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Dear friends 
I'd like to get to know your opinion on the whole "work" stuff.
The reason is that I encounter a lot of people (mostly Poles and Americans) who like to underline how "hard" they work and seem to be highly proud of themselves for doing so.
This has always intrigued me for some reason, because I can't really fully understand the thought process behind that gloating.
It would be great if you could answer two simple questions for discussion purpose:
1. What is "hard" work? What makes a work "hard" and what entitles people to decide whether work is hard or not?
I'm wondering about this because I personally know people (I even worked with one myself) who often say how hard they work. However, what I mostly saw wasn't anywhere near hard. It was more like time consuming or tedious, but hard? no sir. Most of the time, it was a mixture of drinking coffee, chatting with workmates, posting on facebook and doing brain dead reports, a process devoid of any effort of both mind and body. It was literally ctrl+c, ctrl+v with swapping variables. It was tedious because of sheer amount of data needed to copypaste, and it was sort of time consuming because they never knew when they will get a batch of new reports to fill - sometimes they received it very late and stayed late in work because of that - but was it hard?
Let's be honest about this one. Copy paste without using two brain cells is not hard.
A lot of people gloat about how "hard" they work, but if you analyze their jobs, does it really fit the "hard" criteria? It's mostly sitting on your butt in an air conditioned office, tapping on the laptop keyboard and drinking coffee/websurfing.
Bottom line, I really think "hard" shouldn't be used as a substitute for "boring", "uneventful", "pointless", "time consuming" or "tedious". I also think it shouldn't be reason to gloat, because, honestly - why to gloat and pump your ego with something as trivial as copy-pasting strings of numbers into a pre-made template?
if I were to describe the criteria for "hard" work, it would be:
- Working in an environment that's either hazardous, or putting a huge strain on one's body, such as a mine;
- Coping with a lot of responsibility and stress;
- Doing tasks that are physically and mentally tiring.
Most of the office butt-sitters don't fit any. But they still think so highly about themselves. Duh.
2. Is hard work something to be proud of?
Myself, I don't really believe in hard work because, most of the time, the work is only hard - or, rather, tedious - when you're disorganized or not clever enough to develop a working strategy that makes it simplier. A good example would be an intelligence-lacking secretary who doesn't know about CTRL+C, CTRL+V and re-types every text she has to manually. It's sure dull, boring, and tiring - and she may be even entitled to call it hard because one can go mad doing so all day - but is it something to be proud of?
To me, it's more like something to be ashamed of.
Many people gloat that they stay over hours because they have "so much work to do" and that makes their jobs hard. But honestly, how many of those people simply are victims to poor job organization, poor working ethic and not enough commitment to the job to pay attention, focus and do what you're expected to do rather than take regular breaks for facebook posts?
I don't believe in hard work. I believe in organized and efficient work that gets the job done. If it's too hard, I always try to develop methods to make it easier, less time consuming and more efficient.
Finally, I don't really like people who treat work as some sort of ultimate goal in life, a path to happiness or a path to be a better person. Work is more of a tool in my life. If you put too much focus to work, the rest of your life suffers. You end up being proud of doing reports for 12 hours per day, but once asked, what are your hobbies - you reply - I don't have time for that. You don't read books, you don't watch movies, you don't go to theater, you don't do sports. You degrade yourself to an insignificant gear in a corporate machine - one that has nothing except for his "hard" work to show to the world. A kind of poor, ant-like life - no real knowledge about culture, art, history - anything at all - but a single-minded procedure in an office.
Honestly, I'd be deeply ashamed of being such hard worker. I'd feel like an amoeba.
No offense to hard workers, I know life can simply force such stuff - like, having a child to feed, or debt to pay, you have to work in two places at once and end up exhausted and somewhat proud that you accomplished your goal - but it's more about those corporate people who are, like, in your FACE with their work and amounts of hours they spend in their office. Gee, don't you have anything else to gloat about in your life? 
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smithey
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posted January 17, 2014 01:50 PM |
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I have never in my life encountered anyone who gloats over hard work, people who bit*h and complain about it yes but gloat ? never
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Zenofex
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posted January 17, 2014 02:06 PM |
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For me, "hard" is any work that consumes a lot of time and efforts and has to be done for whatever reason. In the real world people are highly resistant to changes, including improvements, and it's quite likely that your boss will not make a difference, hence the large amount of redundant or poorly optimised tasks that might be assigned to you and you can do little about it. The bigger the company you work in, the worse it gets, usually.
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artu
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posted January 17, 2014 02:08 PM |
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Edited by artu at 14:18, 17 Jan 2014.
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I remember reading a book by a Turkish businessman who was really wealthy, yet he sold everything he owned by the time he reached 40 and started to live in oblivion. The book was called "To a Young Businessman" and in it, he was talking about the fact that even the rich had to be work slaves nowadays. He wrote "look how the aristocrats of old times pose for the painters. Under a big tree reading a book or having a picnic by the river... And look how the rich pose for the cameras today, at their office desk or touring a factory."
When did working become a matter of pride? I think it has a lot to do with capitalism and the leftist movements. Before that, we can actually see (read) that people find it quite natural to want not to work and they even feel an open, out-loud pity for people that has to work all the time.
I agree with you that rationally, you should be only proud of your work if it comes with some form of skill or intelligence. But pride is also something emotional and usually a way of coping with things, if somebody is proud to be a factory worker, it's usually in a situation where he has no other (or at least better) option. Think of the anarchist character in Zola's Germinal, he says the minute two workers won the Paris Lottery, they bought a big mansion and started living like the rich they claimed to hate. They didnt share it with their commrades at the factory, they didnt finance the cause, instead they immeddiately stopped being the workers they were allegedly proud to be. Basically, people have a tendency to sugarcoat things they cant change.
Of course, there's another side to the story. One of those aristocrats who posed by the river famously said "Our servants live our lives instead of us." (He didnt go and become a stable boy though.) Working on something, investing time and energy gives you experience AND the skill itself that you can rationally be proud of. It's been quite a while since I havent worked for money, I have just enough to keep my standards. I never felt ashamed of it but after some time your days can turn quite boring and dull.
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Doomforge
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posted January 17, 2014 02:21 PM |
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smithey said:
I have never in my life encountered anyone who gloats over hard work, people who bit*h and complain about it yes but gloat ? never
That's weird. I know a lot of such people. They seem to be awfully proud of not having a life
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JoonasTo
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posted January 17, 2014 02:23 PM |
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What you describe wouldn't fit Finnish working standards as working hard. If you have time to spend hours drinking coffee(unless, of course, you're a coffee tester) you're not working hard. You're just lying about it. But lying about it makes yourself feel better and that's why you do it. You won't find many Finnish people who say they're working hard if they actually aren't, obviously this has to do with culture. Polish and americans are more likely to lie than Finns but I don't believe that's the only thing. Poland was communist for a long while and is a pretty corrupted country in comparison. USA is also pretty corrupted in comparison but there the real reason is most likely the american dream of working hard and making it. So they keep lying to themselves. Also, americans approve of lying as long as it's about yourself, just take a look at their resumes.
Then we can go about defining hard work. Hard by my understanding means that you have to strain yourself to accomplish it. There are different ways this requirement can be accomplished. Solving math problems from the 5th year of uni is hard for most people, it's difficult. For the professor whose life revolves around math, it's child's play so this is subjective.
Now the professor might have 150 math tests turned in on thursday and he wants to be able to give the tests back on friday because the christmas holidays are starting. He can put a lot of effort into grading them that evening to be able to hand them back to the students on friday. He worked hard to accomplish that.
Now the students are overjoyed to find out their math results just before christmas so they can brag to their friends and family over the holiday about how their hard work was worth it. How they spent countless hours and days practising for this test sacrificing their social time and hobbies for it.
Then the student's ageing father laughs and tells the student that's not hard work at all. He himself has just returned from work, where he was outside in the freezing cold, cutting down timber manually because the ground was still too wet to have the machines drive there. He's glad to be home and away from the physical strain the work put on his body.
From the above example we can deduce two categories: working hard and hard work. The work can be hard physically or mentally, requiring a lot of physical or mental prowess. It can also be hard because it is taxing on the person, physically or mentally. This can also be subjective. Intelligent people usually find very repetitive tasks very mentally taxing while mentally impaired usually find them easy.
The other category is working hard. This can imply exerting a lot of effort for accomplishing the task. Sacrificing other aspects of life to be successful also qualifies in this.
So now that we've established the basics of my reasoning we can discuss what I think.
Let's take your copywriter example. If he's really not smart enough or technologically savvy to be able to find copy/paste commands then yes, I think it's possible he's working hard. But if someone were to show him how to use the commands, he could still be working hard, just a lot faster. Or he could have been typing the documents at a leisurely pace from the beginning and he would never have worked hard.
As to whether it's hard work, it wouldn't be for me since I've been writing on computers a lot but were it given to my grandmother then it would be hard for her. It's all relative. And were to writing to be done by hand it would be even harder.
Which brings me to another point I want to make. NO ONE wants to do hard work. If you find someone who is doing a hard work and offer them a solution to make it easier, they will all be happy with it(not counting migration and other stuff that gets in the way). People can be proud of working a hard job, but they'd rather it be easier.
Which, of course, has nothing to do with working hard. Hardworkingness is one of the most valued qualities in people(which English actually lacks a word for, coincidence?) all over the globe. Not working doesn't provide food to the table and so a hardworking person was beneficial to the group. There's no difference today, if you're not willing to work, you're baggage. Thus hardworking still has value in this day. Here I want to note that you seem to treat hardworkingness and efficiency/organization somehow exclusive, why? There is no relation between working hard and working efficiently. You can work hard inefficiently and you can work hard efficiently.
Quote:
Finally, I don't really like people who treat work as some sort of ultimate goal in life, a path to happiness or a path to be a better person. Work is more of a tool in my life. If you put too much focus to work, the rest of your life suffers. You end up being proud of doing reports for 12 hours per day, but once asked, what are your hobbies - you reply - I don't have time for that. You don't read books, you don't watch movies, you don't go to theater, you don't do sports. You degrade yourself to an insignificant gear in a corporate machine - one that has nothing except for his "hard" work to show to the world. A kind of poor, ant-like life - no real knowledge about culture, art, history - anything at all - but a single-minded procedure in an office.
Honestly, I'd be deeply ashamed of being such hard worker. I'd feel like an amoeba.
No offense to hard workers, I know life can simply force such stuff - like, having a child to feed, or debt to pay, you have to work in two places at once and end up exhausted and somewhat proud that you accomplished your goal - but it's more about those corporate people who are, like, in your FACE with their work and amounts of hours they spend in their office. Gee, don't you have anything else to gloat about in your life?
LOL? Seriously? Are you aware how stupid this looks? I'll refrain from commenting on this part untill you're sure you want to keep it that way 
Really wish elodin was here for this thread. He would be perfect for this.
PS. Finnish doesn't really have the term hard work or working hard. It's divided much further and the further definitions are more used. Like physically taxing, difficult, ect.
There is, however, a word for hard worker and hardworkingness. Important distinction to separate the hard work from working hard.
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Doomforge
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posted January 17, 2014 03:07 PM |
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Why do you find that stupid, exactly?
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JoonasTo
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posted January 17, 2014 03:15 PM |
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Really, you don't find it stupid? Replace the work and hobby words with each other and try reading it then. 
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artu
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posted January 17, 2014 03:17 PM |
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Quote:
Really wish elodin was here for this thread. He would be perfect for this.
Mosty, all Elodin did was ignore counter arguments and pretend they didnt exist. His logic was the opposite of Occham's Razor: Assume everything you have no reason to assume if it supports religion. I really don't understand how some people think of this as consistency, or standing out and something to praise. Elodin was alone in his arguments becuse they were really very weak arguments.
Although I admit I miss him too sometimes, OSM is much more quiet and "peaceful" without him, you sometimes miss all the action.
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OhforfSake
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posted January 17, 2014 04:37 PM |
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Hard work doesn't mean difficult, it means "I work a lot", or if you prefer 'I do this thing they call "to work" a lot'.
Doomforge said:
- Working in an environment that's either hazardous, or putting a huge strain on one's body, such as a mine; - Dangerous, may be easy. | Counter example: work at the dumbell factory, easy and dangerous
- Coping with a lot of responsibility and stress; - Important, may be easy. | Counter example: Run a program every day which creates important schedules. Easy, but if there's an undetected and problematic bug, you lose (bug fixing is IT department)
- Doing tasks that are physically and mentally tiring. - To be honest, I find it tiring when all I've to do is blindly repeating a procedure, which could be automated, but it's not necessarily difficult
In my opinion, difficult means challenging. Computer games are, at first, usually difficult, unless you've "been there, done that". Once you find "the" optimal strategy, you're at a point where you've found the procedure any company would hence forth hire people to repeat indefinitely to take advantage of this find to make money, if it had not been a computer game, that is.
I like to work on my own projects, you can call it hobbies, or work, I like to say it's the same. I do it a lot, so it's "hard work", I find it challenging, because I've to find solution to rather unique problems, and I do find it difficult, I can be stuck on the same problem for a long long time, years even. Some of them are repetitive tasks, but they're still difficult, because despite knowing exactly what it requires, it may require bodily strength, others I may have no clue what exactly to do yet, but it's not requiring any strength. Finally when it comes to stuff I have to do every day, or every other day, such as common house hold chores, I try to use that time to either relax my mind, think of it as a game, or continue to think about whatever project I'm working on currently.
Doomforge said:
2. Is hard work something to be proud of?
I agree with your idea that it's optimal to make organized and efficient work, not mindless "hard work", and I follow the fear of splitting life into non-work & work.
I imagine a child whose parents often can't spend time with him, because the parents have to work. They work a lot, so they do hard work. They're proud of it, because through this they believe they give their child, and each other, the best possible life, because the money they gain grants security. The child would probably rather prefer the parents didn't do mindless repetitive tasks, and in stead found a solution that would allow them to spend more time with their child.
Here's how I imagine the proud scale works:
When it comes to it, the only meaning there's to life is what we put upon it ourselves. In the end there's death, and I believe most give up on the idea of fighting death itself, and what does that leave one with?
The idea of fighting for a good life in the time one has, and what becomes even more important is the idea of fighting for a good life for those close to you, child, wife/husband, family.
A good life is a life of possibility and safety. A major measure of these two traits is money. With money you can pay the bills, find the best schools, find the best hospitals, find the best place to live, etc. With enough money, you'll get invited to the best places, etc.
This is where I think the people you describe are at their life, they work hard (means a lot), to earn money, to provide a good life. Since to them, that's the most important thing they can do with their life, they're very proud of it.
I believe once they have gathered enough money, or failed in doing so (realizing being so much away from family does more harm than good), there are several paths of changed priority they may end up on.
1) Realizing childhood dreams
2) Devoting oneself to spend effort with those important to you.
3) Work for work itself, either because of habit (come to a point where the person can't find comfort without working X hours a day), or because said person really enjoys the work, and maybe hasn't yet realized if spending much time away is unpleasant for others.
There are probably many more paths of changed priority, and to be honest, I think it somehow lies in the definition of being proud that it's impossible not to be proud of doing what one finds important.
PS: If it's not clear, I think every parent are proud of having children, it's only that I'm not sure if they're proud of spending time with their children of activities they themselves find a bit.. redundant?
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Doomforge
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posted January 17, 2014 04:44 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Really, you don't find it stupid? Replace the work and hobby words with each other and try reading it then.
I still don't find it stupid. I honestly don't follow you on this one?
Are you implying that a person with multiple interesting hobbies, knowledge about art/culture/history/philosophy and such is equally interesting as a person who works 12h per day in an office, producing copy-paste reports and knowing absolutely nothing about the world?
To me, first person is fascinating, the second one is boring. You can spend a day with the first guy and never run out of subjects to talk about; the other guy will bore you to death after 5 mins since he has nothing to say. His life revolves around mundane, repetitive tasks.
And would you want to be a boring person?
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JoonasTo
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posted January 17, 2014 04:55 PM |
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Right, you don't get it.
Quote:
Finally, I don't really like people who treat hobby as some sort of ultimate goal in life, a path to happiness or a path to be a better person. hobby is more of a tool in my life. If you put too much focus to hobby, the rest of your life suffers. You end up being proud of doing reports for 12 hours per day, but once asked, what are your work - you reply - I don't have time for that. You don't read books, you don't watch movies, you don't go to theater, you don't do sports. You degrade yourself to an insignificant gear in a corporate machine - one that has nothing except for his "hard" hobby to show to the world. A kind of poor, ant-like life - no real knowledge about culture, art, history - anything at all - but a single-minded procedure in an office.
Honestly, I'd be deeply ashamed of being such hard hobbyer. I'd feel like an amoeba.
No offense to hard hobbyers, I know life can simply force such stuff - like, having a child to feed, or debt to pay, you have to hobby in two places at once and end up exhausted and somewhat proud that you accomplished your goal - but it's more about those corporate people who are, like, in your FACE with their hobby and amounts of hours they spend in their office. Gee, don't you have anything else to gloat about in your life?
Like this. It doesn't matter if you replace work with hobby, family, music, whatever. I just picked hobby since that was what you used as a counter to it in text.
What does it matter what you spend that time on?
Am I to understand you despise all people who are dedicated to something? This is why I wanted to make sure this was intentional.
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smithey
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posted January 17, 2014 05:10 PM |
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Doomforge said:
I still don't find it stupid. I honestly don't follow you on this one?
Are you implying that a person with multiple interesting hobbies, knowledge about art/culture/history/philosophy and such is equally interesting as a person who works 12h per day in an office, producing copy-paste reports and knowing absolutely nothing about the world?
To me, first person is fascinating, the second one is boring. You can spend a day with the first guy and never run out of subjects to talk about; the other guy will bore you to death after 5 mins since he has nothing to say. His life revolves around mundane, repetitive tasks.
And would you want to be a boring person?
Are you implying that a person with multiple interesting fields of expertise and a job which requires knowledge of art/culture/history/philosophy and such is equally interesting as a jobless person who plays video games 12h per day in his room ?
To me, first person is fascinating, the second one is boring. You can spend a day with the first guy and never run out of subjects to talk about; the other guy will bore you to death after 5 mins since he has nothing to say. His life revolves around mundane, repetitive tasks.
And would you want to be a boring person?
See what I did there ? Its that simple to flip the coin
Person is either interesting or not, him being interesting has nothing to do with him working hard or being jobless... individuality and all that jazz
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artu
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posted January 17, 2014 05:15 PM |
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I think it kind of depends on what your work actually is. Doomforge picks especially dull positions, however if your dedication is, say, to write a great historical novel about Leonardo, it will be your work and research that will teach you about art, history and philosophy. It is a tricky balance between specialization and having a variety of interests. They say one who only knows about architecture doesnt know about architecture either but then we also have people we call "jack of all trades, master of none" and its getting harder to become a "Renaissance Man" (in other words, a polymath) each passing day because the level of information and the amount of time required to truly know something on a specific field becomes more and more sophisticated. Internet changed a lot, it saves great amount of time but only if you're someone who also reads actual books and therefore have the filtering mechanisms to select out the disinformation and BS from the good stuff.
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mvassilev
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posted January 17, 2014 06:01 PM |
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For what it's worth, I've never heard anyone brag about how hard they work - and I live in the US. What I have heard is people indignantly saying that they work hard, in an "I work hard, so why do I have to put up with this?" sense, as in "I work hard, why do I have to pay for welfare for lazy bums?".
Also, DF, some people are organized, efficient, and productive, but they have a lot of work to do. They work long hours efficiently, so they get a lot done. And your caricature of people who work hard as not knowing anything about culture is way off-base - in my experience, they work harder and read more books and are physically healthier. Also, some people genuinely find their jobs to be fun, or at least rewarding (not only financially). Still others are dedicated to making money so they can give it to charity.
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blizzardboy
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posted January 17, 2014 08:57 PM |
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I doubt the OP is ever going to be a very happy person. People make fun of people that take pride in their work. Here's a newsflash: those people are happy, and you ain't, and you know it, and you envy them. You're not suppose to waste your existence trying to get home asap so that you can pursue XYZ hobby. Optimally, work, rest, and leisure should all flow together, such that it is hard to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. The only way you can free yourself from time is to stop worrying about it. Not to say that streamlining work isn't a good thing, but if you're staring at the clock every 10 minutes waiting for it to reach a certain hour, then your life sucks.
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artu
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posted January 17, 2014 09:22 PM |
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What does the OP stand for?
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blizzardboy
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posted January 17, 2014 09:30 PM |
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over powered
Original poster.
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OhforfSake
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posted January 17, 2014 09:39 PM |
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Don't stop looking at the clock!
Don't lose attention on the clock! Last time I did that I was 6 and now I'm 26! I've no idea what happened.
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Doomforge
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posted January 17, 2014 10:22 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Like this. It doesn't matter if you replace work with hobby, family, music, whatever. I just picked hobby since that was what you used as a counter to it in text.
What does it matter what you spend that time on?
Am I to understand you despise all people who are dedicated to something? This is why I wanted to make sure this was intentional.
Sorry Joonas, this doesn't make any sense
Most jobs are extremely one dimensional and focus on repeating stuff in accordance to an algorithm over and over.
Whereas stuff like art, music, literature develops your personality and makes it richer.
I'm not talking about people working for Discovery Channel here, but mostly, simple office workers who keep bragging about their "hard work".
I'm surprised you don't know many guys like that. maybe it's indeed a "Polish problem".
Let me guess, now someone will try to write that simple office workers have hobbies too. So, let me reply in advance: thanks captain obvious, but I'm talking about those that don't.
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