Hand Off the Hot Potato: why you shouldn't carry stress alone
Freddie Laker’s book is on sharing the burden, but he admits he keeps the most stressful work, the 'hot potato', all for himself.
Freddie Laker wrote a whole book about collectivism as a better way to work. He thinks the current system is fundamentally broken, concentrating wealth and leaving a lot of people behind. His solution is a collective model, where everyone shares the risks and the rewards. That way, one person isn't carrying the full burden of being an entrepreneur, a stress he knows firsthand. He told me he wasn't trying to write a bestseller, he just wanted to get all these ideas about making capitalism work for everyone out of his head.
When he’s not running his company, Freddie is a self described tinkerer. He says he got it from his dad. He’s always busy, always looking for something intellectually stimulating, whether it’s building a huge woodland garden, working with AI, or messing around in VR. He says his hobbies feel like work to other people, but not to him. His retirement plan is literally to go to culinary school, just because. Downtime is not really his thing.
The book has this great line, “No one should carry it alone.” So I asked him if he’s any good at actually letting other people help. He was honest. When it comes to the really stressful stuff, the 'hot potato,' he's not. He has a tendency to try and save the world on his own, taking on what he calls the 'hairy, messy, horrible thing' so nobody else has to deal with it. He knows it goes against everything he preaches about collectivism, and it’s something he’s working on.
“I'll go take on this really hairy, messy, horrible thing that no one else wants to do.”
Notes
- He and his wife plan to go to culinary school together when they retire.
- He describes himself as a 'tinkerer,' a trait he got from his workaholic father.
- His book on collectivism proposes a model where people work together to share risk, so the full burden doesn't fall on one person.
- He calls stressful work the 'hot potato' and admits he tends to handle it himself to avoid stressing out his team.