Last month, Justin Levy was speaking to our local Social Media Club about workshifting when one attendee asked how she might go about convincing her employer to let her work from outside the office. He suggested a book called Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It (Amazon Affiliate link) by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. The topic doesn’t exactly apply to me, but I’m always on the lookout for new ideas so I decided to give it a read.

The book starts with explaining why much of what we inherently believe about work (time + physical presence = results) is outdated and simply ineffective. I particularly like this analogy: “what if it were some kind of new disease that suddenly appeared and cost businesses billions and ruined people’s lives, you can bet that we would be marshaling our collective resources to find a cure.” The authors aren’t saying that work itself is bad, they’re pointing out that the way most of us play the game of work is: the constant supervision and lack of trust, the politics, the endless meetings, the clock-watching, etc.

So what do they propose, you ask? A Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) where people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. They’re quick to point out that this isn’t flextime or core hours or casual Fridays, but a radically different approach to work.

So I’ll admit it – I was a little leery. But I kept reading.

They also coined a term, Sludge, for the negative commentary that occurs naturally based on our outdated beliefs. We’ve all heard it.

“Coming in at eight thirty again? Boy, I wish I had your hours.”

“How many vacation days do you get? I haven’t taken a vacation in five years!”

“I wish I smoked. Then I could always be on break and never have to work.”

Ok, so that section got me.

Ressler and Thompson continue: “Sludge is essentially about judging people. We judge to make a point that someone is different. We judge to point out that someone is acting outside the rules of work. We judge to make ourselves look better, to show that we’re the hardest working and most dedicated.

When we judge one another in this way, we’re championing a system that distracts us from what really matters (results) and focuses our energy on what doesn’t (time and place). We walk around feeling guilty and incompetent (or making other people feel guilty and incompetent), either sleepwalking through the day by filling up hours, or by having to craft elaborate workarounds to a system that couldn’t be designed any better to retard accomplishment.”

Ouch. And then it really hit me: we don’t just sludge at work. We do it to our spouses, to our friends, to our business partners, even to our kids. It’s one of those beliefs that we have on auto-pilot, freely spewing sludge without really thinking about it.

Out of curiosity, I pulled out my Bible to see if I could find some reference to this sort of behavior. It didn’t take long. In the book of Matthew where Jesus teaches us about living, he specifically instructs us not to judge others (7:1-5) and to ensure that we are producing fruit in our own lives (7:15-20). And Galatians adds: Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct (6:4-5).

I would venture to say that Jesus was the first to identify the ROWE as the ideal working – and living – environment. Ressler and Thompson do a great job of showing us what the problems look like in current times and how to go about correcting them. I’d encourage you to read the book and start implementing a Results-Only approach in your own life. For a lifetime time tracker like me, it’s going to be tough to break some old habits. But I absolutely believe it’s the right thing to do. You?