“Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. The men in gray knew this better than anyone. Nobody knew the value of an hour or a minute, or even of a single second, as well as they. They were experts on time just as leeches are experts on blood, and they acted accordingly.”
Michael Ende, the guy who wrote the 80s hit Neverending Story, also wrote a kids’ book called Momo. That’s where I got the quote above. It’s a story about a little girl, Momo, who stands up to the mysterious, cigar-smoking men in gray.
The men in gray show up in Momo’s town and open the Timesaving Bank. “Deposit your current time,” they promise, “and you’ll get it back with interest in the future.” All the townspeople jump at the offer and lose themselves in the process. Momo is the only one who resists.
I’ll get back to Momo in a second. But first let me tell you about something interesting I read today. It’s an article by Cal Newport, the guy who wrote Deep Work. Newport’s article is titled Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek.”
In the article, Newport says that we as a society missed the real message of Tim Ferriss’s 2007 book. Instead of learning to improve our productivity, reduce our working time, and live a happier life, we focused on Ferriss’s hacks. So we could get done more. So we could strive more. So we could be more busy.
But Newport is hopeful. Now, with work-from-home, and corona, and a different economic situation than in 2007, he thinks we have a real chance to rethink our relationship to work.
I have my doubts.
In Michael Ende’s book, the men in gray don’t just roll over and give up control of the Timesaving Bank. It takes Momo to take them on and defeat them.
Something similar will have to happen in our world. The men in gray will fight hard for the 40-, 60-, and 100-hour workweek. They won’t just sit on the edges of their seats, nervously sucking on their cigars, watching to see if we’d maybe like to run them out of town. It will take a fight, and a big one.
But it will be even harder in our world than it was in Momo’s.
Because here, the men in gray — whatever they represent — aren’t some external parasites. Rather, they are inside each of us, as much a part of being human as decency and common sense.
Maybe you find that thought repulsive. Or maybe you find me repulsive, and you wonder what I’m on about. So maybe this is where we part ways. In that case, I wish you good luck in your fight for the 4-hour workweek.
But if you’re still with me, let me tell you how you can get the equivalent of a 400-hour workweek, without working harder, longer, or even smarter.
The secret is to take advantage of the magical power of multiplying what you do, so that a bit of work can get you paid disproportionately.
Thanks to the Internet, it’s pretty easy to do these days.
It’s how I’ve been able to achieve the real promise of Tim Ferriss’s book. Escape the 9-5. Live anywhere. And join the New Rich.
I embraced the men in gray inside all of us, along with all the other weird, wonderful, and repulsive parts of being human. And for years, I’ve been using this to help clients with their “salesmanship multiplied.”
More recently, I’ve been helping myself also. Except I find that, rather than “salesmanship multiplied,” what works even better for me is “influence multiplied.”
If you’d like to find out exactly what I mean by this and how I do it… you can do so in my Influential Emails training. I will be putting it on soon.
But the deadline to sign up for it is even sooner. Only two days from now. Tik tok.
Time is life itself… and time to sign up is passing. If you know the value of an hour or a minute, and you want to multiply the value of yours, then this might be for you: