In praise of 'eating snake'

This coming Chinese New Year, people will be ringing in the Year of the Snake.

The snake motifs in shopping centres and supermarkets make me think of the Hokkien phrase "jiak zua", or eating snake. Colloquially, it refers to someone who likes to take it easy and slack off work.

In British philosopher Bertrand Russell's 1932 essay In Praise Of Idleness, he writes that a "great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work".

The philosophical essay written almost 100 years ago advocates for taking it easy and slacking off from work for all. In essence, jiak zua for everyone.

Russell believed that the relentless pursuit of work and productivity would lead to a diminished quality of life, and suggested that a certain amount of idleness was necessary for creativity, contemplation and overall well-being.

The critic of the modern work ethic is still relevant today where workers continue to prioritise efficiency and productivity over leisure and personal fulfilment.

He writes that "without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this deprivation..."

The proposal for a shorter work week - more leisure and play time - could yield lasting benefits for society by increasing overall happiness and creativity.

Let me share some examples in which the practice of "eating snake" is desirable. In programming American Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language, often said that "a good programmer is a lazy programmer".

Jiak zua is a hallmark of some of the best programmers because lazy programmers tend to find efficient ways to automate tasks, reducing manual effort and increasing productivity.

Such programmers seek the simplest and most elegant solutions to complex problems, and are more inclined to develop innovative tools and techniques to streamline their work.

Perhaps the most famous lazy programmer is Finnish software engineer Linus Torvald, creator of the open-source operating system Linux. It operates nine out of the 10 web servers powering the internet today.

He has openly proclaimed that "I'm just lazy" as the reason he supports the open-source movement to recruit others to do his work for him. 

Via open-source and such a philosophy, Torvald has famously harnessed thousands of the top minds in programming and operating system development in the service of Linux without having to pay them a single cent.

Tiny Speck was a small gaming app company that was founded in 2009 by Canadian tech entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield.

Fresh from the sale of his previous start-up, Flickr, he decided to build a social fantasy game that let players collaborate and complete quests together. The company Tiny Speck was built on playfulness as a core value.

"Those moments of play that we do get in meta-life, like playing music, golf or word-play, or flirting - those are some of the best parts about being alive", said Butterfield on why he created Tiny Speck.

After Butterfield spent US$9 million (S$12 million) of the US$15 million raised on developing his game, he realised that he was in grave danger of running out of funds. At that point, he called his investors and said: "I have no way to raise money because I've made really no progress."

Anyone who has ever jiak zua at work or in school would be able to identify with this sentiment. The six-week window to finish an assignment is over and you have made no progress.

Butterfield offered to return the remaining US$6 million that he still had left or commercialise the tool that he had built to coordinate the programming of Tiny Speck's game.

In the end, the company commercialised the tool and that is what people know today as Slack, which companies around the world rely on for communication, co-ordination and collaboration.

As many users will attest, the power of Slack is that it solves the problem of flooded inboxes and is a replacement to e-mail for collaborative work.

Slack's irreverent approach to serious communication embodies its core value of play and is quintessential in applying the spirit of jiak zua in innovation.

Lazy overachievers

A Forbes article in December 2024 described the phenomenon of the Rise of the Lazy Overachiever. It highlighted that some of the best performers in today's organisations are slacking off at work.

What makes these jiak zua overachievers tick? According to the article, these workers have "realised that in a knowledge economy, productivity isn't about time spent; it's about problems solved. And they're solving them faster than ever, leaving us traditional 'time equals dedication' believers in an existential crisis".

It argues that the workers who are eating snake are not lazy, they are just efficiency-obsessed.

Isn't it time to measure workers based on results delivered and not focus on how much time is spent working? Similarly, workers should be compensated based on what they deliver and not how much work activity has been created.

I would prefer to have a company full of jiak zua overachievers over those who spend their time clocking up the hours.

As the Forbes article put it, such "employees often create more value because they have the energy and creativity that come from not being exhausted. They're not working less; they're working smarter, and it's time we caught up".

Ultimately, an ode to eating snake is a call to re-evaluate people's priorities and purpose in a world where artificial intelligence is ubiquitous and taking over much of the mundane work that workers had to busy themselves with in the past.

Strangely, after more than a century, the words of Russell's essay still ring true. "Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever."

This Chinese New Year long weekend could be an opportune time to practise your slacking-off skills. It could be a time to indulge in a bit of restful idleness: to recharge the creativity and contemplation engines, while engaging in playful leisure.

If people can do it over a long weekend, they have a real chance to successfully make jiak zua a way of life in the Year of the Snake.

Abel Ang is the chairperson of Republic Polytechnic and an adjunct professor at Nanyang Business School.

Source: The Straits Times