Bill Gates Sr Showing Up for Life – Hard Work

I continue with the audio material by Bill Gates Sr, Showing Up for Life. In this segment, he talks about the value of hard work.

One of the reason Bill Gates Sr gave for working as hard as he did when he was younger was that he likes working, and the challenge of making decisions where there is the risk of failing.

Another reason was because of his father. He recounted that in his first summer job during high school, he worked as a ‘swamper’ in his father’s furniture store, lifting furniture and delivering them to people’s home. In 1912, his grandfather, William Henry Gates agreed to $733 to buy a furniture store in downtown street Bremerton. Bill Gates Sr said that his Dad’s life revolved around the store. His image of his dad was him walking around every night picking up coal that had fallen off the trucks and putting them into their coal box. Coal then was used for heating. The reason was due to the era of the Great Depression and there was the fear of poverty. Bill Gates Sr stated that his father had learnt what it meant to be poor long before the Depression, who as an eight years old, sold newspaper in the freezing cold of Alaska to help the family get by while his dad went panning for gold. As an eight grader, he gave up school to support the family. He didn’t go to movies or ball games, fish or bowl or hike, or take a vacation.

Bill Gates Sr recounted how in the early days of Microsoft, his son, Trey (Bill Gates) and his partner, Paul Allen worked, ate and slept in their first office where they wrote software programs. There were no days off, and they worked at the same relentless pace for decades.

It is ironic that I remember coming across a quote by Bill Gates which goes “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” I suppose one can dispute the conventional wisdoms sometimes, and see things in more than one way.

Another contrarian remark that I read came from Warren Buffet who quotes Ronald Reagan - “Hard work never kills anyone. But why risk it?”

In addition, I think it also important to question whether one’s hard work is being adequately rewarded for. Is there a better way to do things? And who stands to gain from all the hard work that is being put in, especially when one is working for another person as an employee?

The wisdom teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes makes some really apt points about work to put things into perspective. In Ecclesiastes 4:4-8 – “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Again I saw something meaningless under the sun: There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. “For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?” This too is meaningless— a miserable business!”  The point here is moderation when it comes to work. To not be like the fool who impoverishes himself with his laziness, but it is also meaningless to work oneself to the bones and deprive oneself of enjoyment in life.

Some people work to the extent that they forget how to live life when they are not working, and find it difficult to enjoy themselves on their vacation or on their day off. What comes to my mind now is a snippet from Lee Kuan Yew, who speaking from his own experience, called on elderly Singaporeans to be more “productive” and work as long as they can: “You work as long as you can work and you will be healthier and happier for it. If you ask me to stop working all of a sudden, I think I’ll just shrivel up, face the wall and just that,” he said. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do apart from working anymore. I like this quote from one of my favourite writers of all time, Lin Yu Tang, from his book “The Importance of Living” – “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

I suppose my approach when it comes to work is to learn to find means of earning a living where I find fulfillment and do good, and to bargain for my fair share of wage commensurating with the profit I gain for the company, and to find ways and means in society to which I can invest my money, such as through entrepreneurships or through investment vehicles like stocks and shares.

I wouldn’t want to have to work to such an extent that I have to compromise my Christian commitments, such as not going to church on Sundays or constantly missing on weekly fellowship meetings, or I won’t have to time to spend with my family. And I guess it would be necessary to set out the rules from the start when finding employment that I would draw the lines as such. As of now, I am not sure whether I am someone who can handle too much stress or too much work, such as having to work overnight and going on sleep deprivation.

I heard that as a lawyer, the working hours are long, especially in the private firms. A senior I know relates to me how she is getting burned out from the long hours and workload she is getting from a big law firm, and having to work throughout the weekends. It makes me apprehensive on wanting to choose such a law firm to work at. On the other hand, I have heard how work life is pretty balanced being a Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Attorney General’s Chamber.

I really could do better by knowing how to make money, and not be trapped in the conventions where I earn a regular stipend working hard and long hours for others. I suppose I will try studying how rich people make their money to see if there are effective ways of making money without exhausting myself with too much work.