Less is more is all the rage.
One area of focus is the workplace, which may be a bit of a misnomer given the difficulty many people have in completing their work.
Anne Fisher at Fortune has an idea: slack off. Ms. Fisher quotes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton, on the cumulative effect of this work-life fatigue:
“On the organizational level, what you get is, everyone is so focused on running flat-out to meet current goals that the whole company is unable to step back and think.”
At the end of the article, one company mentioned approvingly is Google, which adopts such attributes of a laid-back culture as lap pools, massage rooms and pool tables. Stacy Sullivan, the company’s HR director, notes that:
“We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people’s lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity,” […] “And everybody’s on flextime here, so we don’t reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results.”
Sounds fun. Are you hiring?
Then I spotted a link below the article that promises to talk to big-name company leaders about “How I Work.” Scroll down to see the link to Google VP Marissa Mayer (the link says “I’ll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight.”). Part of her relaxed culture is dealing with 700-800 emails a day; one tactic is catching up on the weekend.
Sound fun? Well, while Ms. Mayer apparently isn’t a statutory insider, I’m sure she is well compensated. Nice crib, by the way. Or is it her office? (Ed note: my treadmill has clothes hanging on it).
If others at Google are interested, Merlin Mann has a few new email handling hints. One astute observer calls it tyranny.
The FBI may have the best solution: don’t give your G-men email. Google apparently can’t do that with its G-women.