the american work ethic
In my ever-ongoing efforts to combat procrastination, I have been observing how other efficient and productive people deal with stress and fatigue, if they ever encounter any at all. I have made some very interesting discoveries.
First, there appear to be a cultural difference of work ethic between Americans(that is, predominantly white academics types) and Koreans (including Korean-Americans). This difference is very subtle on some levels, but also vastly different on other levels. And this difference of work ethic is what leads to the apparent academic success of most Asian Americans in their teenage years. Interestingly enough, this work ethic that drives Asian teenagers to success is also what ultimately leads to their demise later on in life (most likely in college).
Put simply, there is a brutal efficiency and simple-mindedness with which Americans do work. There is an emotional detachment to performing the daily commitments that allows them to apply themselves day-in and day- out with comparatively less stress. The opposite is true for Asian-Americans. They tend to invest a lot of “mental energy” into even the most routine tasks. Every task is an emotional event, for good or for worse. This leads to better outcome at first, but also leads to quick burn-outs. It also results in initial greater physical productivity at the cost of greater mental stress.
This cultural difference permeates every fabric of the two societies. One of the most common conceits in Korean TV Soap operas is the story of the Underdog, who devotes his entire life to a certain craft, like brewing wine or studying law, sacrificing everything along the way, including his family, friends, and whatever else, and ultimately ends up as the CEO of a wine company, or a highly successful international lawyer. Implicit in all this is the exceedingly high mental investment into his goals. What I’m trying to say is, Koreans tend to have a “All-in or not worth doing” mentality. What do Americans say? “Take it easy, man.”
The end result is almost exactly the opposite of what one would expect. Where as in the Korean TV shows the “all-in” mentality leads to great success, in reality it leads to burn outs and failure due to too much stress. On the other hand, the American mentality of “Take it easy” actually takes you pretty far. Performing daily tasks with a somewhat emotional detachment allows one to be more productive with less stress.
My lesson from all this is that I’m going to try to “Take it easy.” But the trick is to only “take it easy” mentally and emotionally, while still applying myself physically with emotional detachment. In other words, perform tasks out of habit rather than out of necessity. This seems to be the best approach to maximizing productivity.
March 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I like how you distinguished the two different “work ethics” of Koreans and Americans in general; you also proven how the Korean’s manner of working with emotional stress is very destructive and causes burn-outs.