Working in Movement

Work. You can't live with it, you can't live without it. Same can be said of play or activities that otherwise don't fall into the category of work. But what's a good balance between work and not work? Does sweating bullets and busting your ass in the name of work really buy you anything? Does overwork work?

Veterans of the corporate cubicle wars might be tempted to answer yes. Focusing almost exclusively on work has certainly been a key value in the majority of corporate cultures.

But maybe that's not always the best way, at least according to author Tom DeMarco. The Cool Tools website lists his book Slack:Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency. In it he argues for the value of slack in the work world. Not to champion laziness, mind you, but hitting on the right balance of busyness and slack. According to DeMarco:

The Legacy of the nineties has been a dangerous corporate delusion; the idea that organizations are effective only to the extent that all their workers are totally and eternally busy. Anyone who's not overworked (sweating, staying late, racing from one task to the next, working Saturdays, unable to squeeze time for even the briefest meeting till two weeks after next) is looked on with suspicion. People with a little idle time on their hands may not even be safe.

Now, stop reading blogs and get back to work.