Self-worth

“Your worth as a person does not come from what you are paid. It comes from who you are and what you give.” –Joe Dominguez

Too often, I think we measure success by external measures. We look at who has the biggest house, the largest paycheck, and the newest car. We choose these objects because they are easy to see and clearly measurable. Jason earns more than Sue, therefore Jason is more successful. Sue has a nicer yard than you, therefore she wins.

It’s not always this obvious. Still, if I stop and really listen to my thoughts, I find that I am subtly comparing myself to those around me. I might be jealous that my coworker gets to leave early, or I’ll find myself judging someone else’s lack of computer skills. When we create a competition between ourselves and others we will end up with a winner, but we’ll also always end up with a loser. Either way, we’re creating unnecessary emotional turmoil for ourselves, as the truth doesn’t lie in the black and white comparisons we see. The truth is in the nuances of life.

Jason may earn twice as much, but he also puts in 60 hour weeks and is caring for his extended family. Sue has to spend money on a gardener or invest a large portion of her free time maintaining that yard. We can never truly know the extent of another person’s experiences. We may think our boss is a complete ass, but we don’t know what aspect of his personal life causes him to be miserable. Thanks to an irritable morning of dealing with our boss’s mood swings, we rush past the gas station clerk without noticing that he’s sporting the biggest smile we’ll see all day.

I carry an index card in my purse with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh written on it:

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.”

I use this to remind myself not to be reactive. Yes, that comment from my colleague may be completely out of line, but I don’t know what happened this morning to put him in such a nasty mindset, or if the tone of my voice reminded him of someone else. If I am reactive, I only serve to further the conflict and ruin my good mood.

The emotions we feel towards someone else, whether or positive or negative, are simply a reflection of ourselves. If my friend feels jealously towards me and chooses to react negatively, that is a reflection of him. By using external measures to compare ourselves to others we’re engaging in a pointless endeavor, because they will never tell the whole story. If we can accept that each person goes through life with their own burdens and is doing the best they can with the options they were given, we can let go of our jealousy and appreciate the things we already have.

Without looking at those around you, you already know your own self-worth and it has nothing to do with the size of your waist or your wallet. The sum total of our worth is immeasurable, because the things that matter can’t be measured. Your self-worth is in your experiences and your relationships with others. The faster we can stop contaminating those relationships with petty comparisons, the better we’ll feel about our own lot in life.

Let's ROWE!

1:15. Skim an article about productivity. 1:17. Space out for awhile. 1:32. Refill coffee cup. 1:34. Check for new emails. Still 1:34. This is my typical afternoon as a clock-watcher. I don’t plan to watch the clock, I just can’t help myself. There’s nothing like being bored out of your mind and knowing that you can’t leave yet to drag time to a standstill.

Perhaps it’s because of my clock-watching habit that I’m so intrigued by the idea of a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). ROWE is a concept created by two Best Buy Human Resource managers, Judy Thompson and Cali Ressler. Instead of working a set number of hours per week, work is based on results. You are free to do your work whenever and wherever you want, as long as you get your work done. It’s such a simple concept on the surface, but it has the power to revolutionize the way we look at business.

Clock-watching aside, consider how a ROWE would impact your personal life. There would be no need to flex your hours in order to pick up your kid from school. You wouldn’t have to waste a precious vacation day waiting for the repairman. If you friend was visiting, you could meet her for lunch and not have to rush. Just imagine not having to set your alarm, sit in traffic, and slip in late through the side door.

But wait, if your boss can’t see you how will he know you’re working? Wouldn’t productivity plummet as these irresponsible slackers spend their days sleeping in and shopping? As it turns out, the truth was quite the opposite. Productivity sky-rocketed 35% under Thompson and Ressler’s scheme, while employee turnovers dropped 90% (Lee 34).

As impressive as they are, these results are hardly surprising to me. As my afternoon demonstrates, the fact that I’m physically at work does not mean that I’m doing work. Instead, I’m finding ways to alleviate my boredom and pass the time. However, even if I was swamped with work I would be more focused on the task at hand if I wasn’t worrying about personal errands. With a ROWE, I would have the flexibility to get my work done and get the cat to vet on time.

Requiring employees to sit under the watchful eye of the boss does nothing to foster trust and cooperation. If anything, it creates a passive-aggressive environment of presenteeism and guilt, where each employee rebels in his or her own way. Some feel a twinge of happy revenge after sneaking out early, while others maintain that the first one in and the last one out is the winner, regardless of the impact on their personal lives. Generationally, the stereotypes persist. “Some boomers felt they’d been forced to choose between work and life during their careers. So everyone else should, too” (Conlin 65).

ROWE isn’t just an extension of flextime, which Thompson and Ressler refer to as a “con game” and a “total joke.” They feel that the problem with flextime is that it heaps “needless bureaucracy on managers instead of addressing the real issue: how to work more efficiently in an era of transcontinental teams and multiple time zones” (Conlin 63).

With flextime, you’re expected to make up your hours to ensure you still get a full 40 hours each week. Flextime results in the same amount of clock-watching, with the added bonus of feeling stigmatized because you were “lucky” enough to work a modified schedule. No matter how you slice it, 40 hours is 40 hours. In the spirit of complete honesty, I think Kelley Butler, the Editor-in-Chief of Benefit News, said it best:

“Traditional work hours benefit companies more than they do the employees…if employers really want to keep valued workers, it is time to make a change” (7).

Thompson and Ressler found a way to make that change and in fact, their plan worked so well that they have since branched out as private consultants and created CultureRX, a Best Buy subsidiary designed to help other companies set up a ROWE. They also published the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It to further explain their idea (Westcott 31).

A ROWE might not work for everyone, but then again, isn’t that the point? We don’t all have to follow the same path, and work in the same way. As employees reexamine their priorities and the millennial generation takes to the work place, I can clearly see the benefits of this alternative. It’s time to change the way we look at work and finally stop watching that clock.


Butler, Kelley M. “Time to ROWE with the Flow.” Employee Benefit News Mar. 2007: 7. Web.

Conlin, Michelle. “Smashing the Clock.” BusinessWeek 4013 (2006): 60-68. Web.

Lee, James H. “Hard at Work in the Jobless Future.” The Futurist 46.2 (2012): 32-35. Web.

Westcott, Scott. “Beyond Flextime: Trashing the Workweek.” Inc 30.8 (2008): 30-31. Web.

Knowing When to Quit

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.”

I hated that quote when I was a kid. I could never understand the point of forcing myself to excel at activities where I clearly lacked the aptitude and interest. The activities I excelled at were the ones I was passionate about, and unlike a smug platitude, passion will give you the courage and dedication you need to work through the rough spots.

I was more driven to succeed when I was a kid because I was much better at distinguishing between passion and futility. I knew when to move on, and when to stick it out. As adults, I think we have a tendency to get wrapped up in the details of how to succeed, which results in an inability to see the forest for the trees.

We also have a lot more pride to contend with as adults. It’s difficult to say, “I’m not good at this,” and walk away. We worry about what our friends, family, and colleagues will think of us. We forget that it’s not their life; it’s ours. It’s our responsibility to recognize our skills and our shortcomings. Walking away from something may be difficult, but the freedom is worth it.

One of the easiest ways to spend too much time on a futile project is the “sunk cost” fallacy. Stephen Dubner, from the popular Freakonomics series, defined the sunk cost fallacy as “the time, or money, or sweat equity that you’ve put into something, which makes it hard to abandon.” The sunk cost fallacy makes us cling to a sinking ship far longer than we should. We end up doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, just as the old misattributed definition of insanity assures us we will.

Together with co-author Steve Levitt, Dubner discussed the Upside of Quitting in an episode of Freakonomics Radio. One of their points that resonated with me was the idea of failing quickly. Levitt explained it beautifully:

“One of my great skills as an economist has been to recognize the need to fail quickly and the willingness to jettison a project as soon as I realize it’s likely to fail.”

Instead of dragging a hopeless endeavor around, drop it and move onto something you can successfully finish. Moving onto something else is really the most important part of quitting. Every hour (or day, or year) you spend on something that’s not worth the effort is time that you could be spending on a successful project. This is called the “opportunity cost.”

We all have those projects in the back of our mind that we’d love to try out “if only we had the time.” This is your time. If you can recognize and let go of the failures, you will free yourself to go after the things you’re passionate about. Where would you invest your time if you weren’t busy proving you’re not a quitter?