Work Backwards – Book Review

 

 

The Book Review Series

 

 

A few years ago, I received an email from Tim Duggan, who wanted to interview me about the trades. He had come across The Pros and Cons of the Skilled Trades – one of the numerous articles from this website on Google’s first page – and he wanted to know more.

Our conversation was great, and he used it for his book – something I am immensely proud of.

Aside from the shameless plug about being in this book, it is extremely useful, diving into the nature of work and exploring new ways we can approach it. Full of research, hard data, anecdotal evidence, and lots of examples from numerous interviews, let’s take a deeper look at what Tim Duggan has offered the world in Work Backwards – Book Review, coupled with some thoughts of my own.

 

---

Introduction: The end

 

“The way we are working is broken, and it’s up to us to fix it…Too many of us are overworked, disengaged and increasingly apprehensive about the future, and much of this malaise can be traced directly back to the role and importance we’ve placed on our jobs, giving it top priority in our lives – to the detriment of everything around us. We have let work dictate how we should live, and now something is about to break. If we don’t make changes soon, that something will be us.” – Page 1

 

Right out of the gate, Tim reveals the premise for the whole book. He removes any ambiguity, allowing the reader to get their head in the proper space – something I appreciate.

 

“No matter which way you look at it, we are caring less about work. Data from workers in 155 countries shows that almost two-thirds of us are emotionally detached at work, and only half of US workers said they were really satisfied with their jobs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, almost 40% of people said the importance of work had diminished for them during the Covid years.” – Page 6

 

For my part, I welcome the decline in caring about work. For too long, it has been the central focus for too many, enriching too few, all the while swallowing up families and destroying lives. That isn’t to say work isn’t important – but it needs to be in its proper place.

Moreover, I am reminded of a quote from Peter Drucker, often referred to as “The father of modern management,” writing in Managing In The Next Society:

 

“I am for the free market. Even though it doesn’t work too well, nothing else works at all. But I have serious reservations about capitalism as a system because it idolizes as the be-all and end-all of life. It is one-dimensional…

In short, whole dimensions of what it means to be a human being and treated as one are not incorporated into the economic calculus of capitalism. For such a myopic system to dominate other aspects of life is not good for any society.”

 

---

 

Related: Read Managing in The Next Society – Book Review

 

---

A better way

 

“Whatever your salary is spent on, it’s being used to fund your lifestyle. The problem here is that most of us haven’t consciously decided what this lifestyle is. It’s just something that creeps up, with bills, costs and commitments that seem to appear out of nowhere. And the more you are paid, the higher those bills are.” – Page 18

What Duggan is describing is how most live life – drifting too and fro, never giving any real consideration to being intentional. What’s more, he is absolutely right. There IS a better way, and this book helps us see that.

 

“You have to cut through the noise around where work is heading, and instead see things like hybrid workplaces and four-day work weeks as tools to be experimented with, evaluated, used and adapted to meet your needs.” – Page 21

Perhaps one of the things I appreciate about Tim is that he understands the need to experiment; not everything can work given the numerous variables. Hybrid or remote work is applicable for the office, but for those in the field (construction, industry, etc.), four-day work weeks are possible. In fact, they are desirable. What works in one industry won’t in another – but we still need to experiment to find what does work.

 

LIFE

How much time do we really have? We are not promised tomorrow…

 

“There are some positive effects of capitalism, of course, such as the way it encourages efficiency and innovation, but as the prevailing system that rules over our lives and dictates the way society behaves, it’s beginning to fall apart. There is only so much tension that capitalism’s dark sides, like inequality, short-termism and irreversible environmental costs, can take before the system no longer works.” – Pages 27, 28

“Work should not be the most important aspect of our lives. It does not love us back, and we will not fondly recall the nights we worked late when we’re on our deathbed. There are so many more important aspects to life, such as family, health, relationships and ourselves. These things are far more meaningful than just clocking on and off until we retire.” – Page 41

Duggan hits it out of the park with this. Again, too much emphasis is placed on work. Work will not be around us when we are on our deathbeds, so why then do we prioritize it over just about everything else? So many questions that go unasked.

 

---

---

 

And now we come to my favorite part of the book – my own contribution 😏

Initially, I was going to quote the whole part, but this is still a book review, after all, and I want to encourage everyone to purchase Tim’s work. It’s definitely worth it.

There is one part I will include here, however:

“As well as working as a foreman on job sites and a construction safety manager, Rusty publishes podcasts and blogs under the moniker ‘The Wealthy Ironworker,’ and this work is designed to educate people like him. The name is intended to get people thinking about how they define wealth. ‘What is real wealth?’ he asks. ‘The conventional definition of wealth is the acquisition of something for money, but I also think that health, time and good advice are all forms of wealth…I have a wife who I’ve been with for 12 years, I have three wonderful kids, I have a pretty good work and life balance – all of these things make me wealthy. I can make all the money in the world but I can’t get my time back.'” – Page 47

 

Work Backwards Step 1: Create a MAP

Meaning

 

“In recent years, the pandemic forced many people to re-evaluate the primary role of work. Different generations, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, are just not as motivated to spend their whole lives striving to reach the top of the pyramid.” – Pages 52, 53

“The difference is that, while finding a personal purpose is hard, finding meaning is easier. A real meaning is something that is highly personal to you. You are the only one who needs to even talk or think about this part. The meaning that you derive from your life is just for you. That realisation is very freeing. You don’t need to compare your meaning with someone else’s. You don’t need to tell me about it. You don’t need to advertise it on your social media.” – Page 65

Tim Duggan is dropping some wisdom here.

 

Anchors

What keeps you anchored – grounded?

 

“Your anchors follow you through life. They develop during your childhood and adolescence, are tested and pushed during your early childhood, and are generally set by the time you join the workforce. Your anchors can be affected by your friends, your community, your religion and everything around you. Your anchors define who you are.” – Page 68

 

Priorities

What are YOUR priorities?

 

“The way we are working is relatively new in historical terms. Sure, our parents and our parents’ parents, working in similar ways, but there is nothing traditional about the way work has bustled its way into the prime position of our lives. In 2019, US writer Derek Thomson coined the term Workism to describe our modern fascination with sacrificing ourselves on the altar of work. ‘Workism is making Americans miserable,’ he wrote, describing it as ‘the belief that work is not only necessary for economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.'” – Page 80

“Instead of prioritising work ahead of everything else, we need to take a more holistic view, aiming for a full-circle life where each of the four quadrants of work, relationships, body and mind are all given roughly equal time and attention.” – Pages 86, 87

Tim is absolutely correct here. I know so many guys who have sacrificed their family for the mere pursuit of “wealth” – only to end up with neither. Work is a means to an end, not the end itself.

 

“To work backwards, you need to start with your end goal. You do this by creating a MAP that indicates exactly where you are. The MAP shows you the meaning you want to get from work and outside it, the anchors that define you, and what your priorities are. These are the three things you need to know in order to put yourself first.” – Page 101

 

MONEY

 

Finland has been ranked the happiest country for several years now. Why?

“One of the secrets in Finnish happiness and life satisfaction is not that they are all wealthy and healthy, it’s that they have enough of everything to keep them content.” – Page 123

Contentment is one of the most valuable things you can possess.

 

Work Backwards Step 2: Know your ‘enough’

For some people, there is never enough of anything

 

“‘Enough’ is one of the English language’s most magical and revolutionary words. The very idea pushes back against ingrained capitalism, fear-based marketing and everything society teaches us about accumulating things, stuff, people and experiences. The most revolutionary action we can take is to accept that we have enough and that we are enough.” – Page 135

“Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don’t.” – Page 139

Louder for those in the back, please.

 

“A Backwards Budget shows how much it will cost you to live a life that makes you happy, fulfilled and content. It is the bare minimum you need to earn from a salary or side hustle in order to be satisfied.” – Page 142

This reminded me of an article I wrote in The Budgeting Series, designed to get people thinking of the type of life they say they’d like to live, realize how much money they’d need, and then try to find a job/career that would provide it for them.

 

---

 

Related: Read Reverse Budgeting and Building a Case for Opportunity

 

---

WORK

Picture from a recent job I did. I enjoy work, but do not want it to be my entire life.

 

“Our struggles with work are as old as work itself. The history of labour is a long, protracted battle between classes, social systems, technology and ideas that goes to the very core of who we are as human beings and how we should spend our time. Jim Stanford, the founding director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, sees our relationship with the working week as a symbol of our struggles, as workers fought their way from working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, to getting Sundays off, then Saturdays, then annual holidays, paid parental leave and more. ‘None of those things came about because employers said, “Oh, my workers love it and they’re going to work harder,”‘ he says. ‘They all came about because workers organised, and demanded, and fought for those things.'” – Page 159

For my part, I really appreciate what Tim is saying here, and any labor history – coupled with our understanding of human behavior – we can clearly understand his point.

Said another way, we have had to fight for everything because work should not be our only focus.

 

“Success is no longer about inching your way to the top of a work hierarchy. It is about so much more than that, including personal achievement, potential impact, learning and happiness. Just judging someone by their job title or outwardly perceived success no longer cuts it.” – Page 174

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

Work Backwards Step 3: Use the right tools

Let’s use the right tools for the right job

 

Time to step up to the budget – this section is a collection of tools that we can use.

“The percentage of American workers who said they worked remotely shot from 5.7% pre-pandemic to around 42% in 2020. That’s a seismic once-in-a-generation shift in the way we work that will be felt for decades to come.” – Pages 200, 201

Indeed. There were a host of jobs where it was discovered that working remotely actually works, allowing people to spend more time with their families.

During the pandemic, though, construction personnel were deemed “essential” and we continued to show up every day. While we may not be able to work remotely, we can, and should, look at alternative ways we can work, just like those in an office. This is a good segue to the next part…

 

Speaking of flexible working, he writes,

“Flexible work might include changing the usual start and finish times of a job, taking time off during the day to do personal tasks like picking kids up from school, or working for a very short window of time.” – Page 211

“However, despite the scepticism, most of the evidence is mounting up that there are countless benefits to working less and living more, proving that the four-day work week is one of the most powerful tools that we have to help fix a broken work system.” – Page 226

I believe the backlash against remote work is largely due to a power imbalance. I suspect that many employers want the power to exert more control over their employees. It’s a tale that’s as old as time.

 

“It’s in this space where creativity is fostered and problems are solved, as we give our minds permission to wander down whatever path they’d like to go down. It is here, in the dark pockets of boredom, that ideas can really flourish.” – Page 246

This is one of the best statements in this book. The idea that we have to fill every single minute of our day stifles our creativity – Duggan is absolutely correct.

 

“That’s what I thought success was: making every work day as productive as I could by filling it with endless meetings. But it’s not, that’s part of the ‘busyness’ trap that many people fall into too.” – Page 255

 

Conclusion

 

The way we are working is broken, and it’s up to us to fix it.” – Page 269

“In order to reset our lives and our priorities, we need to Work Backwards, one by one, to create a life that is full of meaning, satisfaction, joy and happiness. The future of your work is waiting.” – Page 272

I appreciate the passion that Tim Duggan has brought to the discussion of work. There are few things that affect us as much as our work environment, and a brief review of labor history reveals how significantly the struggles for change have impacted us. It isn’t easy. It isn’t instant. It isn’t guaranteed. But it is necessary. We don’t need to fall for the trap that work is fine; technology has brought about monumental changes to our lives. We should always be seeking better work arrangements.

Kudos to Tim Duggan for writing this important book. It deserves a place on your bookshelf. I heartily recommend it – and you can purchase it here.