We advance our civilization — or at least our own best interest — by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
– Dr. Roy F. Baumeister, Social Psychology Area Director and Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar (Princeton University)
The more I ponder about this, the more I find it to be true. The more processes you can automate with a machine, or if human-intervention is required, then the more projects you can outsource, such that the more things you can accomplish without having to actually “having to be there” or actively think about, the more you advance and move forward.
Same with saving money for retirement — you save the money and let time generate more money for you. That’s why good financial advisers always say that young people should start saving for retirement when they are young. So that you can put time to work for you, which in effect, is just another operation which does not require your active engagement.
To apply this concept into my career — I like automating stuff as much as I can. Let the machine worry about the processes. The more the machine can take work off my hands, the more time I have free to do something else and move forward. Some people actually like not automating stuff, because then it gives them some form of “job security”.
I think these type of people are f*cking idiots and I would never want to hire morons like that. Service before self. If you’re thinking about yourself more than you are thinking about your organization, then .. I don’t want to work with you. The same goes for managers of “projects”‘s who fall in love with their manual and laborious process too much, because of the sense of job security it creates for them. I guess these type of people _are_ the key ingredient for “top-heavy” inefficient organizations.
The only thing I have to say to people who love being bottlenecks is to please get the f*ck out of my way. I notice that high achievers, the important people, the people who are secure about their own ability, actually strive to never be bottlenecks. They don’t hog information to feel important. They share information so that the organization is informed and can move forward.
Perhaps the holy grail of my liking of automation is if I automated my own job away. Granted, I’d be out of the job, but still, the thought of completelt automating my core function simply means that I can easily replicate myself over and over infinitely. That would be so awesome. Now that’s scalability. That’s creating value for your company. That’s putting the organization before yourself.