News came in today that everybody's favourite billionaire, Mr Richard Branson, has introduced a somewhat postmodern attempt at individual productivity. His idea to endow his workers with unlimited holiday is an attempt to focus "on what people get done, not on how many hours or days worked". Perhaps, then, giving free reign to employees makes them care more about the job they do. If an employee has 8 hours in a day and a job to do, it is only sensible to take 8 hours to do the job; after all, that's what you're being paid for. However, in Mr Branson's method, the job will only take as long as it takes. It's a cut-the-bullshit approach to a problem that every company in the country must come up against and it works.
Now, this wouldn't be my blog if it didn't relate in any way to popular/literary culture, so it only makes sense that I explain the situation from my corner. A commissioned artist is given a structure - a deadline. It is unfortunate that it has to be this way because, as with the workers at Virgin, this can actually be profoundly inimical to productivity. An idea - a poem, a painting, a melody - is a spark. It doesn't last very long. It illuminates and then degenerates back into whatever strange surface it surmounted from. To pretend that it can be structured, or even recaptured, is deceptive. The artist often wants to play the part of the overworked, undervalued cultural dynamo that is a mystery to everyone barring his/her own mother, but most of them just aren't like that.
Creating something special is hard work but it never feels like it and, just like Mr Branson's incredibly lucky employees might indeed find, there is nothing wrong with admitting that if you don't add a brushstroke today, it won't really make any difference. Mr Keats speaks of this as 'diligent indolence' and who should know better about such things than the undervalued cultural dynamo himself? Working for the sake of working actually wastes more time than sitting in silence and watching the world go by. At least there is some kind of (albeit, pretentious) beauty in that.
It's good to be back.
Love!
Mike.xx
