Subscribe
Ryan Healy is a recent college graduate. He is a founder of 
Email Ryan
Read more from Ryan
New here? Employee Evolution is a part of Brazen Careerist, Inc. Brazen Careerist is an online community and career center for Generation Y. We also consult and speak with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact us about consulting, speaking, or how your company can be a part of our Jobs section, please visit our contact page.
Apparently, 90 percent of managers believe they are in the top 10 percent of performers in their organization. I would be shocked if this statistic doesn’t hold true for Gen-Y, considering our, “entitled” nature.
Nevertheless, shouldn’t everyone think they are one of the top performers in their company? If you don’t have enough confidence to believe you are a top performer, then you can’t possibly become one. Think of it as a self fulfilling prophecy.
Personally, I’m convinced that I am in the top five percent of workers; except when I’m working in a cubicle. When sitting in a cube, I’ll give myself top 30 percent, on a good day.
There is something about a cubicle that absolutely stifles the creativity, ambition, motivation and most importantly, productivity that would otherwise propel me to the top five percent. In other words, cubicle life encourages mediocrity.
Mediocrity sucks. I would rather be great at some things and bad at others than mediocre at everything. I believe most millennials feel the same way. And it only makes sense that we want to be great at the one thing that takes up the better part of our waking lives; our jobs.
To be great at anything you have to be incredibly productive. When I discuss flexibility and the need to create hours that work best for my schedule, I don’t ask because I’m selfish or lazy. I ask because I know what circumstances allow me to be the best at what I do.
Apparently, I’m not the only young person obsessed with productivity. In a recent article from Flack Magazine, Life Hacking 2.0, Cal Newport discusses the productivity or “Life Hacking” phenomenon:
“It’s less expected, however, that these same young people, famous for cynicism, and an Office Space-fueled distrust for all things related to cubicle culture, would become hooked (On Life Hacking). But they did.”
Of course we did. Life Hacking and productivity may as well be synonymous with the anti-cubicle culture. We embrace fast paced, stimulating, outcome oriented work. Cubicle culture consists of 6 hours of slow-paced, lazy, mediocre work, and 2 hours of slow-paced, lazy, uninterested web surfing. This creates a serious disconnect.
Want more proof? Many of the top blogs on theInternet are devoted to “Life Hacking,” and many of these readers are in their early twenties. Scott Young runs a popular productivity blog, and despite having no hard stats, informal surveys show the majority of his audience is between 20 and 25 years old. Life Hacker, the Internet’s number one productivity blog claims that 68 percent of its readers are under 34.
Millennials are a fairly conforming bunch. We don’t openly protest an unpopular war. We don’t grow our hair long to stand out from the crowd. We openly embrace our parents as friends. And I’m totally cool with all of that.
It’s funny though. One thing we do get a bad rap for are our work habits. We’re called entitled and lazy because we’re ambitious and strive to be productive. If that’s the worst dirt they have on us, then so be it.
We COULD sit back and accept the lazy cubicle culture like the corporate lifers sitting behind us, numb to their lack of freedom and creativity and disinterested in their daily productivity. But what fun would that be?
Young people need to be a little idealistic and rebellious. History has shown that all generations go through it. But while past generations have dissented, millennials value the system. We’re just trying to make it work for us, so we can all be great at what we do.
Popularity: 6%
Interesting stuff Ryan. This apparent problem with “the cube” baffles me, though, and I wish I understood it better. What is it about sitting in a cubicle rather than — I don’t know; a meeting room table? your kitchen table? an offsite coffee shop? wherever — that stifles creativity so much? It’s just a place with a chair where you can put down your laptop, isn’t it? Are modern creatives really so short on imagination?
I suspect it has something to do less with the cubicle itself and more to do with scheduling, but I’m not sure that’s a problem that’s going to be easily or completely solved. I think everyone has hours of the day when they are more or less productive, and if you are in a position where you can truly schedule your own hours and not affect anyone else’s work, then committing to working during your most productive hours is smart and responsible. But for the rest of us, we have to commit to set, agreed-upon “office hours” for the sake of internal communications, client meetings, and deadline commitments.
I also don’t want to ignore the fact that some people will point to “the cube” as the reason for their lack of productivity when honestly, they’re just looking for an excuse. The company where I work has bent over backwards to accommodate alternative working arrangements, and I’m not sure the productivity numbers really support it. Some people became much more productive, I’m sure, while others became far less in the face of all the new distractions and the lack of oversight.
Sean, I completely agree. As a Gen Y who can find countless things to complain about in corporate culture, the cubicle really isn’t one that I can be passionate about. My 8’x12’ might not be the most exciting place in the world, but when I’m working it’s no more or less inherently productive than my apartment (which feels about the same size anyway). I have some posters up, some cartoons blasting Six Sigma and various other corporate nonsense, a few cubicle toys, and it feels “creative� enough. Not that my job requires a great deal of creativity, but it is sufficient.
My only problem are the hours, but I’ve got to be able to communicate with other associates and clients, and I don’t think many are on the owl schedule that I’d ideally be on.
The “work smarter not harder� mindset is something that I will not let go of, however. Yeah yeah, I’m going to self proclaim that I’m in the top 10%, but there is no doubt about it. Using both capacity and time to completion metrics, there’s no way I’m below that. And still, I have downtime at work. My problem is that I could take 8 hours to pace myself through my work, or pound out 5 hours of quality and efficient work and have a couple hours down time to take care of other things, help someone, etc. Even if I didn’t have the internet to kill some of the downtime, I still wouldn’t want to work in a mediocre, inefficient, and slow paced environment just because that’s all that is expected. I don’t think those surround me are necessarily lazy, but I do think when it comes to matters of efficiency I’ll always take the “hurry up and wait� approach, where as some are more concerned with getting their 8 eight hours.
I think a lot of this comes from corporate expectations, but that’s a completely different topic. But when you’re expectations are time (and only marginally marginally effort) based and not productivity based, you’re going to breed what we see now. No way around that.
I’ve always said that if I owned a business, if possible, I’d love to see a 6 hour day as company standard. More when needed, I can’t imagine much less than 4, but a 6 hour standard with Friday afternoons off. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done, and while I have no doubt I could pull off my current role in such a schedule, I don’t think it’s ready for a top 10 Fortune 500 company. Doesn’t fit the mold.
i always say i can’t work @ home b/c it’s too distracting and not conducive to work but i find that even if i’m anywhere else, it’s the same for me.
i gotta “get in the zone” and that usually seems to occur when i knowingly only have very little time to finish it so i end up wanting to continue working, only needing to be torn away from my work for some reason.
like on sunday i woke up @ 10am but didn’t get “ready” to start working on something till 3am and finished at 5:30am and had to get up for work @ 8:30am.
whether i’m @ a cubicle, my home, a place with high ceilings, or outside on a nice autumn day, the time i have left to work affects me more than the work setting that i’m in.
@Sean and Nathan - I think you guys are right, productivity has a lot to do with the hours you work. When I talk about the “cubicle culture” I am referring to the whole thing. i.e. the 9-5, the monotany, the cube etc. Some professions don’t allow flexibly working or working at home, but the ones that can afford it should embrace it. They will have more productive workers. Also, Nathan, I love the 6 hour work day and Fridays afternoons off. If people know they have 6 hours and they can leave, I bet they will take the hurry up and wait approach like you say. On top of that, when overtime is really neccessary, you’re workers won’t really mind.
@Rayana - The time thing is interesting. I know many people who feel the same way and only work best at crunch time. However, I am much better at finishing tasks ahead of time.
-Ryan
While not perfect, I view productivity as mostly being a function of being able to focus on the task at hand. And, if it is a task that is well-liked by the individual doing it, the focus can easily slip into “flow.”
Thus, the cube is a continual threat to focus. One has to tune out all the conversations, phone or otherwise, around them. One has to tune out the 57 varieties of desk and cell phone rings that take place all the time. One has to tune out the idiocy of having a speakerphone on in a cube for a conference call while our cubemate doesn’t even speak on the call.
Then deal with the interruptions of your teammates coming to your cube for help every ten minutes. And your manager coming to ask you questions every hour.
Then throw in instant messaging and your own phone calls (not dependent upon cubes) and you can understand why no one is getting anything done. The cubicle environment just doesn’t cut for productivity.
Gen Y might be much better at dealing with all of these distractions then most because they have grown up with most of the technology floating around right now.
But my thought is that cubes aren’t great work places because they allow so many distractions.
I like to consider myself a top performer in the office even with my short existence within the company. I develop new ideas, strategies and create headaches for upper management with my findings. The cube is something that I do have a problem with. The ‘cube’ just wasn’t in my plan. I am a creative, I need to see people and interact and the ‘cube’ stifles that. I agree with Rayana that working at home is not my best option. Phones ring, the dog eats up the carpet or the wife would rather I watch something on TIVO. I do my best work at work. For my outside businesses I work best at coffee shops and such and gain inspiration from the outside world, occassional people watching, and the like.
I dunno, maybe it is my sense of entitlement or maybe it is because I want more from my life than living for 8-10 hours a day in a ‘cube’. But I think by thinking bigger than the cube and making the best of your time you can make it out and be that top performer that you already are.
I am reminded of the series of poster and calendars from Demotivators.com, especially the one titled “Mediocrity: It takes a lot less time, and most people won’t notice the difference until it’s too late.”
www.despair.com/med24×30prin.html
Wait until you hit your mid-thirties and you’ll completely undertand everything on that web-site.
I like to consider myself a top performer in the office even with my short existence within the company. I develop new ideas, strategies and create headaches for upper management with my findings. The cube is something that I do have a problem with. The ‘cube’ just wasn’t in my plan.
@Greg – I feel as if I wrote this myself. It was a strange feeling to realize exactly how low the bar had been set when I began my corporate life. Within a couple months I had already brought up huge flaws/current processes that made absolutely no sense. This created huge headaches for management, and it was odd to see the pushback when I didn’t openly participate in the shortcut/minimum work before passing it off mentality.
That’s probably my biggest problem with my corporate lifestyle, and I agree that the cube culture has a lot to do with it. I’m fine in my physical cube, but everything the cube represents, horrible. For reference, my department had an average age of about 40 when myself and another Gen Y were hired. They were explicitly trying to go after the young crowd, grabbing to top of our bunch and seeing how it mixed with the ever experienced lifers. It was almost painful to see how quickly myself and other new hire adapted and almost instantly began to improve upon various processes.
And I don’t even know if I’d call it a cube culture of mediocrity necessarily, I think it was more about the culture of status quo. People wanted to do good work, they aren’t lazy, but they just don’t have the vision or the foresight to take a step back and think about how something could be improved. Because I’m always looking to increase productivity (and therefore minimize the amount of time/effort I have to expend to accomplish any given task relative to the status quo), it comes without any effort whatsoever.
@Scott - I’ve got a few of those, some are so true they actually cease being funny at times.
So does anybody have an answer here? “The cube” doesn’t seem to work for many of you (for some because you feel isolated, for others because it’s distracting); some are even more distracted at home; others are distracted at home but not at a coffee shop; and some seem to get creatively inspired by a steady stream of distraction. I think I see what doesn’t work for a lot of people, but does anybody have an ideal that will work?
Lots of companies offer alternative working arrangements — as I indicated before, my company is one of them — but I’m not sure how realistic it is to expect Corporate America to satsify every preference. Is there a middle ground here?
Personally, I’m comfortable in my cubicle at the office for the days I’m working with my team, and I also work well from home two days a week (we have a separate office at my house with a thick, exterior-type door on it; I rarely hear anything in the rest of the house when I’m in there). I’m not going to let my working arrangement — whatever it is — prevent me from doing my best work.
I think the only answer is to allow people to work where they are most comfortable and productive. The office a few days a week is fine, everyone should be able to handle that. The biggest way to keep people motivated is to throw a wrench in the status quo every once in a while. Tell them to go home on friday at noon or let them work from home on a Tuesday. If employees know they can’t rely on the monotany of an office, they will be a little more inspired to come to work and be more productive.
I despise the cube, I despise that I’m forced to do work their way. If I’m producing results that they want, faster than they can handle it and in a legal fashion what difference does it make where, when and how I do it.
I despise conformity. It’s boring. Boredom promotes mediocrity and laziness. I despise dress codes. If I’m more comfortable in a t-shirt, khakis, and sandals with hair down to my shoulders, wouldnt that make me more productive. Also, I understand dress codes if you’re dealing with clients, but I’m not in that boat.
I agree with Ryan. A good compromise would be to set a few required hours at the office for meetings and the interaction you need. But after that allow people to work when and where they want. I’m most productive at from 11pm to 3am. Why? because that’s what I learned to do at college. Is there anyway I can work those hours at the office? of course not so the company gets my most unproductive hours. 730 to 4.
@Rich and others: I’ve said this before in other places on this site, but there are companies out there that agree with you, and not all of them are struggling startups hoping to use flexible work schedules (opposed to high paychecks and benefits) as a way to recruit fresh talent. If you haven’t already, you might want to look closely at the corporations who focus on “teleworking” (a.k.a., working at home). Do a search on “telework friendly companies” and take a look. Lots of major players.
Note, “working at home” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually working at home. That’s just it: the company doesn’t care where you’re working, as long as they can find you if they need you, and you don’t miss your deadlines. At my company, I was issued a wireless laptop. I work 2 days a week in one of our offices; we have to sign up online for space ahead of time, and yes, that space is a cube. I choose to do that because, no matter how strong your work, there’s no substitute for face time if you’re interested in advancing at all. I established consistent, mid-day office hours that are convenient for my employees and my clients. The other 3 days a week I work from home, from someplace with free WiFi, or, twice a month, at the home of a co-worker with everybody else on my team (we rotate hosting duties).
Of course, don’t be fooled: generally these companies want you to have your freedom partly because they don’t want to have keep paying real estate costs to provide you with a workspace and a parking spot. But if the end result is the freedom you are looking for — and the ability to work during your most productive hours — does it matter?