From IAM Group Ltd Yokohama

"Hard Work is not Necessarily a Virtue"

First, let me make clear that I am not saying that laziness is a virtue.

I work moderately hard, always take my job seriously and deliver the required results here and there.

I also take pride in achieving as much as possible with as little effort as possible. I am always searching for opportunities to automate tedious and repetitive parts of my job, and I try to completely avoid taking on projects that have a low return compared to their workload.

Out of principle, I never work longer than a 40 hour week unless it's a real emergency.

So far I've done OK. I'm a project manager and most of my jobs are 1-2 year contracts for large corporations. I'm not high up the corporate ladder but the salary is high enough to cover all my material needs.

1-      I know that if I worked a lot harder, I would have the chance to be promoted to a director position, but I don't see the point. The net wage would be 20-30% higher, but I would have to sacrifice more than 30% of my time and energy for the corporation.

2-      I cannot take my achievements to the grave. To me, life is not about achievements but about experiences. Achievements are just a means to an end, which is having awesome experiences. There is a case to be made that social status itself is an "experience" worth pursuing, but corporate titles don't really impress the people closest to me. They only impress people I don't like and don't care about.

3-      There certainly are situations where hard work is worth it, but working for a corporation is not one of them. Most of the fruits of your labor will go to the shareholders and not to your salary. For an employee, the returns diminish very sharply in the corporate word.

4-      A higher position can mean more autonomy, but it also means managing people which is not something I enjoy. And since I do mostly contract work I already have some autonomy in choosing the projects I will work on.

1.       Having said all that, I cannot get rid of the feeling that I'm somehow letting myself down. Rationally it all makes sense, but emotionally there is still my dad's voice in my head telling me that I should work hard. Is it worth listening to that voice?

I think the common feeling is that hard work isn't necessarily a virtue on its own, but preferable to entitlement. That you should feel better about having worked for something on your own, rather than having it given to you.

The idea that you should work efficiently is shared among most of society, hence the saying "Work smarter, not harder." I think a lot of value is placed in getting the most results with the least amount of actual effort (as long as that doesn't just mean shuffling the effort onto someone else, of course).

The International Association of Managers (IAM) Group Limited – Singapore, provided me some walkthroughs on maintaining my work ethics while improving my line of duty. I have been talking with several members of the group in Yokohama Japan and they were able to give me some insights similar to mine. I contacted IAM Group Ltd’s website for my story to be posted and hope that all members from as Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and others can read it.