10x work goals: human beings, not human doings - thoughts on how epic work can be a reason for being
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
One sentence summary: done well I think you can get mind blowing levels of happiness from work, that work can be the best thing you ever experience!
Summary:
Right now, for myself, work done well is easily the best thing I know of. If you had told 18 year old Duncan that work would be better than anything else in life (yes, including sex… and even chocolate! What? No, not chocolate! 18 year old Duncan could never have believed anything could be better than chocolate. In case you are wondering, yes 18 year old Duncan was very very mature ;P).
What’s more, for myself work has been consistently getting better :)!
I plan to make work 10x better than it currently is, this I call ‘maslatonic eudication’. Yes I’ve made up some more words.
My process for making work better = 1. Stretch your imagination to it’s absolute limits to come up with loftiest goal you can possibly conceive * 2. Attempt to articulate this goal at the highest resolution you can * 3. Bring this goal into being.
Hopefully you’ll make progress towards your goal, and as you do it’ll then expand requisitely the limits of your imagination so you can then think up new goals that weren’t possible before :). Ie achieving the next level unlocks new levels you didn’t know about before. Say what? Life getting better means that life can get even better? I believe it to be so.
For a long while I was a human doing.
I didn’t choose to go to primary and secondary school.
I didn’t choose what I studied at primary or most of secondary school.
I didn’t choose to go to University, I may have chosen what degree but not that I would go to University
Etc etc
Well, I don’t want to be a human doing, i want to be a human being :)!
++++++++++
Background:
If you work full time you are likely going to spend the majority of your waking hours working. So ideally work should be farking awesome!
The world we live in today is basically totally unrecognisable to what life was like 200 years ago, let alone when humans were in their hunter gatherer days.
Warren Buffett is fond of saying that the average person in the US now lives better than the richest person in the world (John D Rockerfella Senior) did when Buffett was born (1930).
Now you have a fridge (no fridge before), air conditioning (no air con), regulated heating (before it was put on a fire), microwave, the internet, reliable transport, ubereats, supermarkets, smartphones, etc etc.
Some life MECEs for ya (mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive breakdowns):
Obviously, hopefully other parts of your life are awesome as well. Here is one quick MECE for how I split my life:
Fun * consequence = meaning (this is what I try and have work be and is 5 days a week)
Fun * no consequence = play (1 day a week)
Relaxing (1 day a week)
Comment: however this blog is focusing just on ‘work’.
One more MECE for you:
Explicit plan (5 days a week)
The plan is ‘don’t have a plan’ AKA serendipity AKA see which way the wind blows (1 day a week)
The plan is do nothing AKA relaxing (1 day a week)
Please note that I think you can get meaning in many places of life, it doesn’t have to be ‘work’. No one can tell you what you like, you get to decide :). I really like working at Edrolo if that isn’t clear, but others might
eg have a personal project they work on for 100 hours that they plan to never show anyone and get meaning from that
eg I think done well raising children can be deeply meaningful
eg you might work for money so you can provide your family, and that gives work meaning
IMO there isn’t one answer, there is what works for you :).
This blog is about thoughts I’ve made for myself, hopefully there is something thought provoking in here for you.
++++++++++
Detail baby:
1. Work time = 1.1 the work you do * 1.2 the relationships you have at work
Done well, work is the best thing I know of. SERIOUSLY. Yes better than anything else (I’m including things like ‘being in love’, ‘sex’ and even chocolate!!!!).
If you had told this to 20 year old duncan I would have scoffed in your face. Seriously it’s like the world is upside down!
The eskimos have 50 words for ice. The words ‘work’ and ‘good relationship’ are not even remotely close to encapsulating what I’m aiming for. This blog is my attempt to articulate the highest possible conception I can imagine that ‘work’ could be, and the highest possible thing I can conceive that ‘work relationships’ can be. Ie I’m attempting to try and create a goal for the highest plane of existence I can imagine at ‘work’ and ‘work relationships’. As far as I’m aware there aren’t words to describe what I’m trying to articulate… so I’ve made my own :).
There are taxonomies for the detail of what these words mean below, you only get the abbreviation now:
‘1.1 the work you do’ highest level I can currently conceive = eudication
eudaimonia * vocation = eudication
Eudaimonia is an ancient greek philosophical word that means ‘the good of all goods’.
Vocation = one’s calling, life’s work, etc.
Also eudication sounds like education so that makes me happy.
‘1.2 the relationships you have at work’ highest level I can currently conceive = maslatonic
Maslow's hierarchy of needs * platonic love = maslatonic
Maslow's hierarchy of needs = a framework for what is needed to have a good life that I really like. I think if you have all of Maslow’s needs met from a relationship you are likely to have a pretty good outcome.
Platonic love = love of the mind, not of the flesh. Honestly I feel that it’s possible for someone’s mind to be 1000x more beautiful than the most physically beautiful person on earth! Also, I’m a big fan of Plato, after which the word platonic is partially derived!
Yes there is etymology from greek philosophy in both ‘euidcation’ and ‘maslatonic’. This symmetry makes me smiley.
I like the joining of these two words as you are getting all of your needs met (maslow’s hierarchy) through interacting with an epic beautiful mind (platonic love).
The best thing I know of, easily better than anything else I’ve ever encountered, is maslatonic eudicaiton.
Read on to see my attempt to articulate this!
1.1 the work you do:
Work Taxonomy
First of all, it is wonderful to be able to worry about what job to have.
For a long time we were all hunter gathers and then subsistence farmers tilling the soil with our hands.
“In Western Europe in 1700 the were ~ 400 different jobs. Today there are approximately 500,000.” The school of Life.
There are unfortunately still a lot of people who don’t have the same opportunities as we do in say Australia, let’s try and help everyone have the same opportunities.
“The eskimos have 50 words for ice.”
As I’m trying to articulate new planes of being, I think they need a name.
To me the word ‘work’ comes embedded with meaning from today’s society. Honestly I feel it comes with a lot of ‘embedded negative meaning’.
According to studies done in the developed world 90% of people report not liking their job.
Obviously this is not great! I think if most people had the money to retire now they would.
This was certainly 18 year old Duncan’s plan, retire as soon as possible. Now I like ‘work’ so much that I never want to retire.
Also, I believe that once you know there is something to strive for you are far more likely to get there. “Hope is not a strategy.”
My goal here is to articulate the highest possible conception I can imagine currently of what work could be.
Then once I’ve tried to articulate this I can try and bring it into being. COOL!
Work equation = 1. Interesting * 2. Challenging in a good way (aka flow) * 3. Good for the world * 4. Likes company strategy * 5. Feels like the company is making progress
I feel like I need to add in some more levels here, haha. Honestly work is 100x levelled up for me vs 10 years ago… but I’ve only managed to put in 4 levels so I feel like I’m underselling what I’ve personally found… profound!
Seriously, work done well (work + work relationships) is massively better than the high water mark 18 year old Duncan had experienced. It’s messed up.
What is the best level of work called?
Honestly there is not a word I’m aware of that comes close to describing what I think ‘epic mind bending work that can give you 10x as much happiness as eating chocolate happiness can give you’.
So I’m inventing a new word for it (PS if you know a good existing word please let me know).
eudaimonia * vocation = eudication
Eudaimonia = an ancient greek philosophical word that means ‘the good of all goods’.
Vocation = one’s calling, life’s work, etc.
FYI I think words are solutions to problems. They are inherited wisdom from past generations. If you can describe something new with ~1-5 words existing words, then don’t create a new word. However if it takes you say 20 words to describe something then creating a new word is often lower cognitive load. Also, creating new words is fun :)
I don’t mind ‘eudication’ really quite close to ‘education’. And this is what I think I do at both Edrolo and OwlTail (the two companies I have cofounded).
++++++++++++++
Background on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
The theory is that you need to look after each need in order. ie you can’t do ‘beloning’ if you don’t have ‘safety’ looked after first.
And that if you have all levels looked after you have a good life.
Maslow also modified the hierarchy to have another category at the top called ‘transcendence’ which is basically helping others move up the hierarchy.
+++++++++++
1.2 the relationships you have at work
“Life is too short for shallow relationships.”
Why wouldn't you went epic relationships in all areas of your life.
I'm going to argue that is possible for work relationships to provide you with more happiness than any other relationships in your life because 1. You spend more time working than anything else * 2. You have more levels to interact in at work than in non work.
However of course this doesn’t mean you can’t have epic relationships in all areas of life.
The best friendships provide mutual growth.
Taxonomy of ‘relationships’:
L1: someone you know and you catch up and have surface level conversation.
‘surface friendship’
L2: someone who gives you passive ‘L3: Belonging’, ‘L4: Esteem’ and you do the same (ie passive L3 & L4)
what good friendships were for DA for the first 20 years of my life
L3: L2 + you do active ‘L6: transcendence (aka helping them with levels of Maslow’s hierarchy)’.
Socrates “the purpose of a friend to help you be better than you otherwise would have been”
So you are proactively helping someone else with ‘L3: belonging’, ‘L4: Esteem’, ‘L5: self actualisation’ (ie helping them grow).
L4: L3 + someone who is actively doing ‘L6: transcendence’ for you
IMO without building something (eg a business, raising a child) it’s not possible to get past L4. IMO part of how deep a relationship can be is the ‘canvass you have to paint upon’, if you add building something to the mix you have a massively expanded canvass and as such increased opportunities to have relationship rewards.
Haha. It’s kinda like your relationship at L5 has a rewards program, every minute you spend can give you extra rewards :).
L5: L4 + you are working on building something (environment) that makes a big difference.
Most people spend the majority of their waking hours working. At work you can be building something, this gives you a huge new area for which you can interact with others.
It means you can monstrously help eachother grow etc.
This is an epic work colleague. Basically a work colleague has all the canvas a friend has to operate with + entirely new areas!!! As such happiness can be much bigger!
With a model:
You want to be friendly, you want to have emotional support, problem solving support, grow others, others grow you, etc etc.
This model is far from perfect, an example of an issue is: for me work and the relationships you have at work are inextricably intertwined. Eg a lot of the activities I have for relationships here are ONLY possible with an epic job. However I think it helps to separate them to try and explain.
Alright, so in summary:
If you work full time you’ll do more awake hours working than anything else.
The right work is meaningful, it give you purpose and happiness. Eudication.
“People are the best of times, people are the worst of times.”
For me, great work done with great people in a great way is much better than ‘great work by yourself’.
I don’t think you can expect a good life to be handed to you, but I do think you can try and design one for yourself. If you reach for the stars and fail, only to land on the moon, you’ll still ‘fail’ far past everyone else!
Honestly, to me life is a journey, not a destination. It has the opportunity to be the most beautiful epic thing ever :). I’ve very glad to be alive!