S1E9: SIDE CHAT (hard workers v smart workers)

SPEAKERS

LILY, JENNY

JENNY  00:04

Nothing wrong with being a smart worker, I think it's a good thing. And I want to become more of a smart worker I think I have over time.

LILY 00:08

I think a lot of the way, particularly in corporate, you know, situations, a lot of the ways we work are not actually, to what the specifications of the job are or to what the client needs or to any thing like that. It's just because this is the way it's been done. And that's the way it's been done for years. And so you come in and you get trained, and you just do it the way it's been done, because those are the processes. It just goes to show, I think, a lot of the work — and the way we view work — is that grunt work. And it's not necessary for it, for you to do that in a company. And we all just do it because it's linked to how we used to view work, which is you're trading your time for money. You're here for eight hours, so we need to have eight hours of work for you to do. And that's slowly changing. It's like, Okay, are you still doing your job? Can you still do that in four hours without that kind of bullshit buffer work, which I think to be honest, happens in so many offices.

JENNY  02:12

Yeah. And it's so interesting that four hours is the number of hours always repeatedly cited in these studies. Because when I'm writing, if I'm really to be really focused, three, four hours is the max. And then after that, it's kind of just moving things around and bullshit stuff. So that's one thing I want to say. The second thing is I read this book a couple of years ago, I'll put it in the show notes. But it's all about the internet and social media and technology. About technology and how the workplace has changed so much, and how technology has been really helpful, it's a great tool, but also how it's turned us all into human email routers. That's something I've really become aware of the last little while. I'm just reading emails, I'm replying to emails and forwarding emails. And it's really, it's not, I'm not happy doing that, I don't want to do that.

LILY  03:19

And it's also because we're so far removed from actually producing anything, you know. We're no longer there toiling, making something with our hands. We're not even you know, like, during the Industrial Revolution, when we started to become the capitalist society that we are, you know, in the factories, making car parts, we're not doing that anymore. We're living in so much of a service industry, so much of what our products now are so far removed from what we're actually doing. And it's almost like to sustain itself, capitalism needs to create that bullshit work. And so we all are just there making these emails for each other to read. And that takes up, the majority of people's days, if you think about it. If the work that you actually have to do and that you can really focus on and do well, if you've got four hours, you still got four more hours, or three and a half more hours to fill. And so it's like, we're just in this kind of self perpetuating, you know, which is what creates work for each other. So we can all pretend to work. And it's just like, I don't know, it's, it's beyond bizarre. And I think also, like, there's just the littlest things you can do within that, which cuts down your working time so much, and I just don't understand why people don't. And just to like, Yeah, I do wonder if it's also a generational thing as well like, or just an experience thing, but like, I feel like with uni as well, we, like you learnt to be as efficient as you had to, like, you had to be so efficient. You had to kind of get to like the heart of like, what are you asking me to do? How do I do it quickly?

JENNY  04:51

And uni, did you say uni? But how did you learn to do that. Where did you get that attitude from?

LILY  04:56

So like the amount of readings we had to do every week. All of my classes, because all of my classes were arts classes. They all had so many readings. I was doing, like, hundreds of pages of readings a week for all of my classes

JENNY  05:08

And you were doing them? 

LILY  05:10

I was doing as much as I could of them. I don't know, anyone who could do them. So there's just so much to do, but you are scanning. So it means you learn, okay, what am I looking for? How do I find it quickly? How do I condense that down and give a reply? And that's so helpful now, because I am very able to quickly scan an email and be like: That's not to do with me, or that's not to do with me right now or either, so it just kind of cuts that time down so much more.

JENNY  05:34

So you're a human scanner? 

LILY  05:37

Well, that's the thing. Yeah, I'm a human scanner. I'm just like sorting shit into folders. That's all I do. And I get paid for it, apparently. But I do want to, a lot of people in the team who are older, they just don't do that. Yeah, they read it all. And then they reply, and then they're like, Oh, do I you know, and it's just like, Don't worry, you'll find out if it's to do with you. And don't make it to do with you if it doesn't need to be, that's the other thing. People don't have boundaries of... that 

JENNY  06:03

Yeah, true. True, true, true. Yeah. And I find myself sometimes scanning emails and like, yeah, I don't need to read that.