Some quick reflections on persistence, working hard, and hustle culture

The gospel for today is again about one of my favorite stories best summed by this verse: “I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to him for friendship’s sake, persistence will make him get up and give his friend all he wants.”

Indeed, there are times when persistence or working hard is more effective than “mere” friendship and brotherhood.

Persistence and working hard are such values that a work-oriented society seems to admire strongly. As business educators, we want to produce graduates who are persistent and have strong work ethic. Yet our department claims that we want to care for the well-being of our stakeholders and not just look at productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

One of my student thesis groups is exploring how hustle culture comes to be and is maintained within a higher education context, and our initial insight seems to point to the obvious: we have to find the golden mean between persistence, working hard, and caring for one’s well-being. Hopefully, by combining statistical analysis and qualitative analysis, we will be able to estimate thresholds of when work is too much (i.e., borders workaholism or hustling) and what level of working hard is “healthy” such that it leads to higher life satisfaction.

The challenge is that each individual would have particular stamina or thresholds of what level of work leads to lower life satisfaction or may even lead to the suffering of one’s mental health. How should managers push students to increase one’s stamina without leading to burnout?

Maybe athletics is a great analogy for this. Sometimes, there really are contexts or sports where higher endurance is a must. Maybe the goal of educators and managers is to have a sober understanding of a work condition such that we do not inadvertently put people with lower thresholds in positions where they might suffer.

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Luke 11:5-13. “I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to him for friendship’s sake, persistence will make him get up and give his friend all he wants.”

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 279: OCTOBER 6, 2022]

Busyness as distraction

Sometimes it is easy to have an illusion of movement by appearing busy. But the right kind of work does not necessarily steal time unlike a kind of work that wastes us and what we could be.

Insight reveals itself during times of rest and the mundane. What if the Primary Insight is waiting for us to keep still before He reveals Himself?

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Luke 10:38-42. Martha and Mary

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 277: OCTOBER 4, 2022]

Balancing duty and excellence

The tricky thing for teams and organizations is to find the sweet spot between reasonable minimum expectations and encouraging excellence. Too much focus on minimums can breed mediocrity; too much pressure on achieving excellence can breed burnout.

Like music, too much rest is just boring silence; too much sound is just noise. The music analogy can also help us understand how to balance duty and going above and beyond.

In a music group or in a band, every member has spaces to fill. It is everyone’s duty to stick to the agreed timing so everyone can groove. There is a time for a particular member to shine – a guitar solo, a high note for the vocal, an iconic drum pattern, a groovy bass fill, or a playful keyboard riff.

Doing one’s duty should be appreciated but not necessarily commended, because doing one’s duty is to let others shine. It is through good faith that we find ourselves opportunities to shine without depriving others of their spotlight.

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Luke Luke 17:5-10. “We are useless servants: we have done no more than our duty.”

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 275: OCTOBER 2, 2022]

The insight experience depends on our inside conditions

There are times when the hint or the answer may be in front of our eyes but we do not realize it. And maybe that’s the irony of the information age – terabytes of data right before our eyes, but are we ready to make sense of them?

Or the more appropriate question, can we even pay attention in the first place?

What if God appeared before us? Are our inside conditions ready to gain the Primary Insight? Or would we be distracted and unprepared, for we direct our attention to something else?

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Luke 10:13-16. Woe to you; whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 273: SEPTEMBER 30, 2022]

Suikoden and recruiting the stars of destiny

The allure of the Suikoden game is how the best ending requires recruiting 108 stars of destiny or companions. If the hero completes the recruitment of the 108 stars before a crucial part of the story, the collective powers of the stars can prevent death or mend relationships that were otherwise destined to break. I’m especially fond of Suikoden II.

Each star of destiny would have their own dreams that they would either abandon for the sake of the hero or align with the grand vision of the hero. Some allies would abandon their lucrative careers (like Shu giving up being a businessman to be the strategist of the army), give up dreams of a peaceful life (like Nanami being tempted to convince the hero to run away and live a normal life), or bury their grudges (like Jess acknowledging that it is not the hero’s fault that the mayor of Muse City died).

In a way, the game allowed me to appreciate that there is indeed cost to discipleship, a certain sacrifice needed for the pursuit of the grander goal – a peaceful and unified nation. Even the hero had to lose friendships (due to differing ideologies) in pursuit of peace.

From a meta perspective, even the player has to sacrifice time and repetition to replay events or even replay the entire game just to recruit all 108 stars of destiny (I easily ran through Suikoden II at least 10 times!).

Indeed, there are costs to getting things right. It is through faith that we believe everything would be worth it.

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Luke 9:57-62. The cost of discipleship

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 271: SEPTEMBER 28, 2022]