The compelling case for working less

Once you hit the C-Suite you don't even think about work-life balance, because your work is your entire life. I know people like that, who have enough money to retire in their 40s and live in luxury without ever working again, yet they don't want to stop working.

...and not the other way around? It seems like everywhere: even in software, languages and tools that increase the productivity of "lazier" people (aka more "contemplative" or "think a lot, do a little" type of people) are basically always abandoned by industry after the "transplantable" ideas are extracted out of them (Lisp-s, lots of other meta-programming tools like OMeta, lots of functional languages with advanced type systems, lots of ideas for smarter-IDEs, smarter-debuggers etc. - basically what we've chosen to use as professionals is like 20-years behind what "can be done"). And same is true for most consumer facing technologies - nooooobody wants to develop device or apps that minimize user engangement! When this is exactly what the "think a lot, do a little"-people would need to have their output increased without requiring them to work harder.

Also when it comes to online classes and all. There's very, very few content designed to "let it seep in while you have a beer on the beach"... very few "high density but low focus-requirements" educational content. So to make any meaningful progress at learning something, you have to actively make a schedule with hours-lengths chunked of focused time at regular intervals... aka "work hard"! But I know from personal experience that this is not the only way to learn stuff!!! Many of the things I know I've "soaked into my brain" in pretty low-engagement ways that may have taken years to learn what others can learn in weeks of concentrated effort, but... it's just a different feel to it. This kind of knowledge was acquired effortlessly and I can use it effortlessly - I just load up a problem into my mind, and my subconscious just presents me with the solution, no need to actively think about it! And this is just amazing, you get that "god / the-universe downloaded the solution into your brain" kind of high.

Also, at the other end of the spectrum, we don't seem to recognize that a large percent of the population has too low IQs to be able to do any meaningful work in the current world. And yet basically all mind-augmentation technologies are targeted at people that are already smart. Nobody's building a "Siri that could help mentally challenged people work as nuclear engineers", when that could very well work.

Shouldn't we maybe use technology to actively fight against Price's law instead?

Shouldn't we focus on developing technology for achieving more through doing LESS? "Give" less, but "get more in return?" What's even the point of striving for anything else?!

I worry that this already concedes too much. This allows for just as much stressful dominance of work over the rest of life, and shame over any deviation from this script, as maximizes productivity.

Even if my shorter-work-hours productivity doesn't match my longer-work-hours productivity, I'd still prefer shorter-work-hours, with no guilt over having those preferences. My goal in life is not to optimize everything I do for maximum benefit of my employer; I have my own priorities and trade-offs to worry about.