How to Make Your Family Rich

Rice paddy fields at Dawn

“No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.”

That’s a very interesting quote I keep referring to from Gladwell’s Outliers. It’s a saying originated by Chinese paddy farmers, which literally means, wealth comes to those who works hard with consistency and perseverance. In the book, this is contrasted with the Western culture’s wheat cultivation, where there’s a gap of about a 3-4 months where no significant labor is performed on the field because of the unsuitability of the soil during those period.

Note that, the quote refers to paddy farmers. Hence, their work cycle has to start in the morning, before the sun’s first light.

Today, many of us no longer toil the fields, and we’ve come a long way since the industrial era. Many enterprises I know no longer practice such orthodox way of running their business. Case in point, the very platform I am using to write this short essay is built by Automattic, the company that did away with cubicles and every employee works from home.

Some even say that by not reporting to work by a certain time of a day, one is considered an individual lack of discipline. Of course, if one first agree with the working hours, and has the same idea on productivity and efficiency. If by working from 9 to 5 implies great efficiency, we would have a very effective government service- just look at the hours they put in and the number of people employed by the government. We could easily be the most productive and efficient government on Planet Earth.

What do you say about working hours and it’s effect on productivity and efficiency, especially in the context of a technology-based enterprises (where creativity, innovation, effective problem-solving and decision-making is of utmost importance)?

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