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RE: Pondering the Challenges of Life: Being FIRST vs. Being BEST
The fastest and loudest get the credit; quick fixes are preferred over fundamental solutions; thoroughness and effectiveness are so outdated.
Except in some fields of engineering, of course, where the good old adagium of "good, fast, cheap; pick any two" still holds.
Anyway, avoiding such a culture is not cowardice, it's simply moving to an area where you function and feel better. This is a Good Thing for both you and your customers/employers, as happy people do a better job.
And maybe some of it is just because life — in the greater sense — seems to be "speeding up." There seems to be so many more things we "must" get done in life, so we have to run faster and do them more quickly because there are still only 24 hours in a day.
One of the reasons I really enjoy the time we spend when we go back to Denmark on holiday, is that the Danish pace still seems a lot "slower" than in the US; there are no so many things that "have to be done" all the time.
I do remember that engineering saying; first remember seeing it in the shipping department of a retail shop that sent things worldwide.
Americans work long hours and it is bon ton there to look busy and ambitious, but the Danish have similar or higher productivity numbers. There's a lot of "all hat and no cattle" going on, much like in the west of The Netherlands. They still get contractors from the east when they need a building, because they talk less and work better and faster.
The things one "must" do in life? Mostly keeping up with the Joneses and looking successful. I suspect most of it is fake. Strip it off and life hasn't sped up all that much. There's just more fluff that people feel needs doing.
I think 8-).
One of my last "public" jobs I was working for Dell Computer as a globalization specialist, and I somehow got to be friendly with a woman from the Human Resources department. She said that they LOVED hiring Scandinavians and most northern Europeans because these people believed that when you were at work, you were supposed to WORK.
Of course, my Danish relatives do precisely that, but it's based around the idea that you are only AT work 32-36 hours a week. The rest of the time, you are free. Of course, when you come to America and they "hire Europeans" they are taking that work ethic and applying it to a 50 hour week. Naturally, that leads to burnout...