3 reasons I work 80+ hours a week
Without exaggeration, if you want to work more than 80 hours a week, you must also work weekends. Since there are legal working hours, of course I am not a regular salaryman. The established laws must be obeyed. Fortunately (?) I can work with peace of mind because I am the representative of a certain company and therefore I am exempt from legal standards. I really only eat and work to the point where my family, friends and co-workers who are watching from the side stick out their tongues. Why do I work like crazy? There are several intrinsic and extrinsic motives.
To give the gift of freedom to loved ones
The category of family I think is a little big. Of course, the bond is weaker than a typical family, but I sincerely consider the members of the company I run as family. There are many lucks in life, but the greatest luck is when what I do is what I like. I work like crazy to create such an environment for my employees. We are a small business, but the pride and attachment our employees have to our company is not envious of any large company. (Please, I hope it’s not just me…) When it comes to CEOs of companies, there’s a lot of bad images of people doing nothing and only pampering people, but most decision-makers in good companies do the most work. It is a perfectly normal company. Due to the company’s decision-making structure, if I work hard, the effect becomes a common denominator for more people. As a result of such constant efforts, telecommuting has been perfectly settled in our company, and the vacation is currently 22 days. We plan to further extend the leave, ultimately extending it to 30 days. Although it is a new small and medium-sized business, it is steadily sharing profits. I am very happy that I can present a little bit of financial and time freedom to my employees by working like this.
To eliminate uncertainty
It’s a really low salary, but the competition to become a civil servant is fiercer than ever. The reason seems to be that the retirement age is guaranteed as long as there are no accidents, and a lot of uncertainty about the future is removed because pensions are provided after retirement. Most people are naturally afraid of the unknown and unpredictable. I also got a job at a large company to eliminate such uncertainty linearly. But after tapping the calculator a bit, I changed my mind. After calculating the total amount of money I would have earned by remaining at the company until retirement, I decided to work harder and earn that money in a shorter period of time. It’s definitely hard work, but it’s not impossible. And the company is a place where it is difficult to receive 100% compensation for my efforts. Even if I wanted to, there is no legal way to work more than a certain amount of time. (Once again, the law must be respected) Generally, when an employee works 40 hours, I do not get double compensation for working 80 hours. If you really immerse yourself in your work without paying attention to others, your skills will gradually develop into compound interest. I worked like crazy in such a practically new entrant and became an expert in it in three years. Even economically, if I work for about 5 more years in the future, I will get several times more wealth than when I worked for the company until retirement. The magic of compound interest that Warren Buffett spoke of has virtually disappeared in the banking world, but it is still valid in the realm of skill. Although our company is a small business, the reason why we try to give salary negotiation opportunities twice a year and share profits with employees as much as possible is to remove the invisible ceiling and walls that I felt while working. Even if you work hard, you don’t get rewarded, so there’s really no reason to work hard.
Because it’s fun
If you work to death only looking at economic rewards, the limit is clear. Extrinsic motivation cannot overcome intrinsic motivation. If you want something to last a long time, you have to have fun with it. If you feel pleasure, you do it even if you don’t have to. As I write this, it is 10:47 PM. I started work at 8 am today. Except for the time to eat and see personal things for a while, I continued to work. Just because work is fun doesn’t mean every moment is fun. There are times when I don’t want to do it, and I often fall into a slump. However, after you really immerse yourself in your work and achieve great achievements a few times, you realize that not happy times and slumps are a natural part of the whole process. So at that time, the body knows how to adjust the tempo and how much to raise the will. I never imagined that in my life I would say something crazy like “Work is the most fun!” There may be more people who don’t believe it, but I really enjoy my job, so I do it for a long time. The secret is the same as the principle of immersion. Your ability and the difficulty of the challenge must be similar. If it is difficult to raise your ability, find a task of appropriate difficulty, and if it is difficult to find such a task, you must raise your ability. When that happens, you naturally immerse yourself in the work, and when you immerse yourself, everything proceeds by itself. And the feeling of joy that blooms after immersion cannot be replaced with anything else.