Its about how you think about it

There is a great TED talk that I thought about when I read this article. https://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off

The idea of being lazy or procrastinating is entirely in how you think about it and what it is you do when you're not working.

When you go through life thinking that when you’re not putting 100% into your work you are slacking is ridiculous. You rarely should be 100% into anything you are doing, other than creative genius sparks. You simply couldn't keep up going 100% at one thing constantly. IF you worked 100% for a full work day you wouldn't have anything to do for the rest of the week.

Granted if everyone in our society constantly did 100% then we would advance insanely quickly and we would grow as a nation and as a people to the point where innovations would take weeks instead of years. I would say that for the majority of Americans we tend to operate at about 20%–50%. Those who are extremely work minded operate at 50% of capacity. and they even seem tired constantly and they are only going 50%.

The idea of procrastinating is really an idea that we are infused with because corporate America wants us to put 100% 100% of the time into their company. The tables have been turned however. It is becoming increasingly noticeable when companies like google and microsoft and facebook have these giant playgrounds for corporate campuses. Where they don’t expect and the discourage working 100% 100% of the time.

These companies innovate at rates that no other companies experience

Why do they innovate at such increased rates? It is because they changed the mentality of what working was. They said that working 100% of the time at 100% of the time was not ideal. They said working 100% of the time 50% of the time was ideal. When you look at that from an employees perspective you realize how much easier that is to grasp your head around. Working 20 minutes then 20 minute break etc… Instead of the incredibly daunting idea of working for 4 hours then a 1 hour break and another 4 hours. That is scary and what really happens is the employees plan to work 50% 100% of the time but they really end up working 50% 50% of the time.

Corporate America and each individual needs to reshape their ideas over what constitutes the correct mentality when it comes to working hard. Maybe then we can innovate in a few weeks what would take us a year or more now.