Transitioning From Time Based Work

When we’re young we mostly work in labor based jobs. Whether it is doing retail sales, landscaping, or serving, we are doing work that requires us to be physically present. We are selling our time.

Then most of us transition into knowledge-based work–work were the final product matters, not the time it took to get it. But because of labor rules and the stickiness of conventions around work, your work day is still defined by hours.

As a young employee accustomed to time-dependent work it is easy to get caught thinking in the old time-based way about your new work. You might imagine that your employer is paying you for 40 hours a week, but from their perspective, you are being paid to accomplish something and take care of a certain set of responsibilities.

If you don’t quickly adjust to this new reality, you will find yourself slowly losing out on opportunities.

What is dangerous about this situation is that according to the government a work week is 40 hours. So if you put in your time, show up at 9, leave at 5, and don’t check your work communications over the weekend, you will likely never get feedback about it.

A business can’t really say anything negative about it, so you won’t hear about it when you miss a promotion or get fired, you won’t hear about it when you get a mediocre reference from a past employer, but it will have a dramatic effect on your career prospects.

The changing nature of work makes this even more important.

Taking a time-based punch in punch out attitude to work wasn’t the best in past (it’s always been better to think entrepreneurially), but it was not nearly as dangerous to your prospects as it is now. We live in a new world where results are extremely detached from time. You can work at something for weeks and not create any value or you can create a ton of value of over the course of a few hours. If you focus on the hours you are working you will be disconnected from what employers care about and much more likely to lose out on opportunities and end up stuck working long hours for little pay.

On the other hand, if you focus on creating value above expectations regardless of the hours it takes, you will likely find yourself will all sorts of cool opportunities to make money with a minimal time investment.