Work Less, Work More

Recently, I came across an article which was talking about the working habits of some great people. So the article said that Charles Darwin used to work only for 4 hours a day. Gabriel Márquez also used to work for hardly few hours a day. Same goes for many of the writers, scientists, artists etc.

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This, at least initially, sounded very surprising. But as I dug little deeper, I found out that, this working style was very obvious for these people. This was for two reasons- 1. it helped them to nurture their creativity in spare time, 2. And more importantly, unlike majority of us, these people used to work with utmost sincerity whenever they work, however less time the work might be for. So they were not working for less time for the sake of it. But it was with the reason and rationale. The small time for which they used to work, was utilised with extremely high efficiency. And rest of the time was not just spent like that, but it used to be quality time spent with nature, beloved ones and even in introspection, which ultimately helped to give more output. 

If Charles Darwin is hired by any of the companies today, then his working style may lead to his immediate termination, during the probation itself, I'm quite sure. Because in today's world, on one hand we keep talking about the efficiency and effectivity but at the same time number of working hours is our criteria to decide the salary, compensation, job guarantee etc. This can be understood for some of the jobs, but I find this criteria very simplistic escape route for all the employers at large. Because charting out the efficiency criteria needs much hard work, even for the employer, which nobody seems to be ready for. 

So the bigger picture here is, "how much" we work is less important. What matters is "how" we work! So work less but still work more !