11 ms·

Sitzfleisch: The German concept to get more work done

71 points by sonabinu 8y ago

PacifyFish 8y ago
I love German words. Disappointingly this article skirts around the obvious English translation: “ass-in-seat.”
- epx 8y ago
  In pt_BR we sometimes call this kind of people "iron ass" (cu-de-ferro), particularly in the context of school.
  - lhorie 8y ago
    It'd be pretty rare to say "cu-de-ferro" unless you were really trying to be contemptuous. Normally, people say "CDF", which AFAIK originally stood for "cabeça-de-ferro" (iron head). It's a pejorative slang for someone who gets high marks in school. I've heard that "cu-de-ferro" is a homophobic misinterpretation of CDF ("cu" is a slang for anus, and "cu-de-ferro" is supposed to imply you had sex with the teacher to get said high mark). Never heard of it being used in the ass-in-seat sense.
- mc32 8y ago
  Or a bit better rolling off the tongue “Seat-Meat”. [Edit] Although to add, in English "Seat-Meat" is more a pejorative whereas in German it's a compliment saying you have _the_ Meat which can endure the implied demands and staying power it takes to handle that seat.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    That's also a much more literal translation of the phrase. Google Translate suggests it means seated meat. Edit: Ah, yes, that's what's missing. The implication of muscle in your rear for getting the job done.
    - posterboy 8y ago
      If you wanted to be literal it would be sit flesh, perhaps sitting muscles, like working memory and in the broadest sense it might mean composure, patience, dedication in a restricted sense, or in a literally broad sense it means the buttox. Probably not a fat ass gotten from sitting around and neglecting exercise but eating like a weight lifter, although that was my first association in context ... compare "Arsch in der Hose haben" - "to be a hard/bad-ass", referring to courage, abillity and composure more generally, not too different from the massive balls meme. Great story bbc, very tabloid vulgar after all.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Flesh is the nearest English cognate, but meat is the correct translation. (I'm less clear on sitz, if it should be seat or if it is about sitting.) But I'm thinking maybe the idea is along the lines of "put your glutes into it" or "do you have the glutes for that?"
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  English has a slightly more general word. It is "grit". The ability to work continuously and without being distracted. Perseverance of effort. Ability to execute on a long term goal efficiently.
  - _nalply 8y ago
    Sitzfleisch doesn't mean spending effort but more staying power.
  - ThePadawan 8y ago
    I would also consider "grit" to be a very appreciative term. "Sitzfleisch" I would consider more neutral, a person's property rather than a virtue.
- Zanni 8y ago
  Bryce Courtenay (author of The Power of One) calls this "bum-glue."
  - gadders 8y ago
    That's a great book.
sidstling 8y ago
Great headline, terrible article. It mostly talks about German words and almost nothing of German work ethics. The only interesting bit is around the end where it quickly skirts over the fact that you need to make employees realize they are unproductive before you can work on their behavior. All the other stuff is just meh. I mean, the language analysis isn’t even very good, or in depth, with terrible half-assed English translations. Basically, don’t waste you time reading this.
- lnsru 8y ago
  Never heard about this “Sitzfleisch” thing living in Germany many many years. Young people don’t use it. Maybe it’s some old people thing?
  - imartin2k 8y ago
    I’m German and I am sure I’ve never used this word. Few do. Some decades ago this might have been different.
  - wirrbel 8y ago
    It is a word, definitely more something you would hear a teacher say than say as normal person.
  - ofrzeta 8y ago
    It's true that it's not very much in fashion. I haven't used or heard it in decades. Might re-introduce it, though :)
  - yborg 8y ago
    As the article suggests, if you search Google for German language pages with "Sitzfleisch" and "Merkel" you will get pages of links from the last few years using the term. It could be an example of "newspaper German" like people sometimes make fun of the Frankfurter Allgemeine for.
  - maxnoe 8y ago
    25yo German from the ruhrarea here. I have this Word in my active vocabulary and I'm quite surprised there are germans who don't even know it.
wirrbel 8y ago
As a German I spent an abroad term in Canada, so here as a grain of salt the difference between German and the work ethic across the pond. 9am: I arrive in the lab at around, sit at my desk and set up my stuff. Unfortunately there was is one around to start the day with a coffee break. 10am: Canadian lab mates arrive, sit at their desks and go on facebook. noon: After spending three hours reading papers, fitting curves to data, etc. I get hungry. I go to lunch with a Dutch person I met in the building a couple of weeks ago. 1.30pm: Back at my desks. Through the towers of take away junk on my lab mates desks, I can see they made some progress on facebook. 3pm: I try to convince some of my labmates to go for the coffee place within the building to have a short communal coffee break. Of course everyone is too busy and cannot socialize, except for the post-doc from india (who does not facebook) 3:45pm: Back at the desk, wrapping up the results of my day, my lab mates are still "working". Next morning, they will tell me they stayed till 8pm in the lab and how increadibly busy they are. Granted, in between visiting facebook and skipping communal lunch- and coffee breaks, they got some work done and I don't claim I delivered more results in terms of research and learning "output". Yet I think it summarizes my and the experience of other Germans quite well. In Germany there is much more focus on not working long-hours but spending the hours you work productively. A German workday of an office worker is limited to max. 10h per day by law and my employer follows that rule religiously. Many colleagues contractually have 35 h work weeks and working 40 h requires a permit from the worker's council. If you are sick, you stay at home on sick leave, you join your colleagues again when you are better. American colleagues working here for a year or so as part of their assignment quite often start out to send an email that they are sick and will work from home. If you are sick, why do you work? Your job now is to get better. Quite often, breaks for lunch or coffee are started and ended together. Only few people come into the office with half-liter coffee mugs to consume on their desks. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, and office cultures of individual companies may differ. My current company's culture is very German if you arrive before 8am, you might be welcomed with handshakes by your colleagues.
- lnsru 8y ago
  I would say, foreigners always do more than locals. They feel, they have prove something, maybe less social contacts too. I observe the same behavior like your Canadian lab mates with my young German colleagues. All day long sitting in mobile Facebook or drinking coffee for 30 minutes every 2 hours. Germans aren’t majority among department’s top performing people. Edit: it’s IG Metall company and you can’t fire people easily. So low performers accumulate over the time. Talents come and go.
parallel 8y ago
I recently encountered an English equivalent 'ass glue'.
toolslive 8y ago
2 Comments: - It's common Chess vocabulary. Sometimes you need to work for hours to be able to win a technical position. Sitzfleisch is what it takes to do this. - The same word (with the same meaning) exists in Dutch: zitvlees.
mrleiter 8y ago
Experienced the same thing in Austria: I'm from the most western part, which mostly has alemannic and rhaeto-romance influence and the work ethic is "german". You have Sitzfleisch, I go to work/university at 7am and after maybe 5-10mins of relaxing, I get start working/studying. I take a break at midday and a short one in the afternoon and leave around 5.30/6pm People at the very eastern end of Austria, like Vienna, are far less "German". Their work ethic is much more relaxed, and like user wirrbel pointed out, they stay late to work, simply because they start later and get less work done in the same amount of time.
- austrianguy 8y ago
  Very eastern end Austrian here: Working from 7:30am to 5pm. Cannot understand the German work ethic and the often seen German workaholics. You work to live, you do not live to work!
  - Nux 8y ago
    I hear that a lot whenever I'm holidaying in Greece. I totally agree with it. :-)
  - TurboHaskal 8y ago
    I’ve been working in Germany for a decade and I’ve unfortunately never witnessed this so called German work ethic. I do hear about it a lot specially when talking about my home country and ironically during coffee breaks.
neftaly 8y ago
Related, the book "Dreams of Earth and Sky" by Freeman Dyson: "Why did [Oppenheimer] not succeed in scientific research as brilliantly as he succeeded in soldiering and administration? I believe the main reason why he failed was a lack of Sitzfleisch. Sitzfleisch is a German word with no equivalent in English. The literal translation is “Sitflesh.” https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/why_did_he_not_succeed_in_scientific_research_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/... https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=+reason+why+he+failed+was+a+lack+sitzfleisch&source=bl&ots=Zm95CRp9Ev&sig=ZzCpKbJSJAENfEVDd_Ld199eXIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibppLBpqPdAhWBKnwKHXikDYYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=reason%20why%20he%20failed%20was%20a%20lack%20sitzfleisch&f=false https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lp...
fogetti 8y ago
"Before employees can work on increasing their productivity, they need to realise that they are underproductive" This is seriously flawed (and over-generalizing). This basically assumes that the cause of underproductivity lies with the employee. Where are the arguments which are supporting this??
- falsedan 8y ago
  If an employee is unproductive because they are unmotivated, they do have the self-empowerment to say “this project isn’t motivating for me, let’s reassign me/plan for a more motivating project next/go over what the stakeholders need from this”. If they are lacking the skills required to succeed at the project, they can go for training/get more experience from completing a similar, smaller project. And if they are apathetic and feel like they can avoid redundancy by putting in the minimal effort, they can look for a new job. Sometimes the cause is external, like poor & changing requirements or wishful planning, or a bad personal relationship with coworkers, but even then the employee can feed that back to management. If they choose not to act on this feedback, see the ‘apathy’ option above. Source is self-management on solo projects.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

71 points by sonabinu 8y ago

PacifyFish 8y ago

I love German words. Disappointingly this article skirts around the obvious English translation: “ass-in-seat.”

epx 8y ago
In pt_BR we sometimes call this kind of people "iron ass" (cu-de-ferro), particularly in the context of school.
- lhorie 8y ago
  It'd be pretty rare to say "cu-de-ferro" unless you were really trying to be contemptuous. Normally, people say "CDF", which AFAIK originally stood for "cabeça-de-ferro" (iron head). It's a pejorative slang for someone who gets high marks in school. I've heard that "cu-de-ferro" is a homophobic misinterpretation of CDF ("cu" is a slang for anus, and "cu-de-ferro" is supposed to imply you had sex with the teacher to get said high mark). Never heard of it being used in the ass-in-seat sense.
mc32 8y ago
Or a bit better rolling off the tongue “Seat-Meat”. [Edit] Although to add, in English "Seat-Meat" is more a pejorative whereas in German it's a compliment saying you have _the_ Meat which can endure the implied demands and staying power it takes to handle that seat.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  That's also a much more literal translation of the phrase. Google Translate suggests it means seated meat. Edit: Ah, yes, that's what's missing. The implication of muscle in your rear for getting the job done.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    If you wanted to be literal it would be sit flesh, perhaps sitting muscles, like working memory and in the broadest sense it might mean composure, patience, dedication in a restricted sense, or in a literally broad sense it means the buttox. Probably not a fat ass gotten from sitting around and neglecting exercise but eating like a weight lifter, although that was my first association in context ... compare "Arsch in der Hose haben" - "to be a hard/bad-ass", referring to courage, abillity and composure more generally, not too different from the massive balls meme. Great story bbc, very tabloid vulgar after all.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      Flesh is the nearest English cognate, but meat is the correct translation. (I'm less clear on sitz, if it should be seat or if it is about sitting.) But I'm thinking maybe the idea is along the lines of "put your glutes into it" or "do you have the glutes for that?"
AstralStorm 8y ago
English has a slightly more general word. It is "grit". The ability to work continuously and without being distracted. Perseverance of effort. Ability to execute on a long term goal efficiently.
- _nalply 8y ago
  Sitzfleisch doesn't mean spending effort but more staying power.
- ThePadawan 8y ago
  I would also consider "grit" to be a very appreciative term. "Sitzfleisch" I would consider more neutral, a person's property rather than a virtue.
Zanni 8y ago
Bryce Courtenay (author of The Power of One) calls this "bum-glue."
- gadders 8y ago
  That's a great book.

sidstling 8y ago

Great headline, terrible article. It mostly talks about German words and almost nothing of German work ethics. The only interesting bit is around the end where it quickly skirts over the fact that you need to make employees realize they are unproductive before you can work on their behavior. All the other stuff is just meh. I mean, the language analysis isn’t even very good, or in depth, with terrible half-assed English translations. Basically, don’t waste you time reading this.

lnsru 8y ago
Never heard about this “Sitzfleisch” thing living in Germany many many years. Young people don’t use it. Maybe it’s some old people thing?
- imartin2k 8y ago
  I’m German and I am sure I’ve never used this word. Few do. Some decades ago this might have been different.
- wirrbel 8y ago
  It is a word, definitely more something you would hear a teacher say than say as normal person.
- ofrzeta 8y ago
  It's true that it's not very much in fashion. I haven't used or heard it in decades. Might re-introduce it, though :)
- yborg 8y ago
  As the article suggests, if you search Google for German language pages with "Sitzfleisch" and "Merkel" you will get pages of links from the last few years using the term. It could be an example of "newspaper German" like people sometimes make fun of the Frankfurter Allgemeine for.
- maxnoe 8y ago
  25yo German from the ruhrarea here. I have this Word in my active vocabulary and I'm quite surprised there are germans who don't even know it.

wirrbel 8y ago

As a German I spent an abroad term in Canada, so here as a grain of salt the difference between German and the work ethic across the pond. 9am: I arrive in the lab at around, sit at my desk and set up my stuff. Unfortunately there was is one around to start the day with a coffee break. 10am: Canadian lab mates arrive, sit at their desks and go on facebook. noon: After spending three hours reading papers, fitting curves to data, etc. I get hungry. I go to lunch with a Dutch person I met in the building a couple of weeks ago. 1.30pm: Back at my desks. Through the towers of take away junk on my lab mates desks, I can see they made some progress on facebook. 3pm: I try to convince some of my labmates to go for the coffee place within the building to have a short communal coffee break. Of course everyone is too busy and cannot socialize, except for the post-doc from india (who does not facebook) 3:45pm: Back at the desk, wrapping up the results of my day, my lab mates are still "working". Next morning, they will tell me they stayed till 8pm in the lab and how increadibly busy they are. Granted, in between visiting facebook and skipping communal lunch- and coffee breaks, they got some work done and I don't claim I delivered more results in terms of research and learning "output". Yet I think it summarizes my and the experience of other Germans quite well. In Germany there is much more focus on not working long-hours but spending the hours you work productively. A German workday of an office worker is limited to max. 10h per day by law and my employer follows that rule religiously. Many colleagues contractually have 35 h work weeks and working 40 h requires a permit from the worker's council. If you are sick, you stay at home on sick leave, you join your colleagues again when you are better. American colleagues working here for a year or so as part of their assignment quite often start out to send an email that they are sick and will work from home. If you are sick, why do you work? Your job now is to get better. Quite often, breaks for lunch or coffee are started and ended together. Only few people come into the office with half-liter coffee mugs to consume on their desks. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, and office cultures of individual companies may differ. My current company's culture is very German if you arrive before 8am, you might be welcomed with handshakes by your colleagues.

lnsru 8y ago
I would say, foreigners always do more than locals. They feel, they have prove something, maybe less social contacts too. I observe the same behavior like your Canadian lab mates with my young German colleagues. All day long sitting in mobile Facebook or drinking coffee for 30 minutes every 2 hours. Germans aren’t majority among department’s top performing people. Edit: it’s IG Metall company and you can’t fire people easily. So low performers accumulate over the time. Talents come and go.

parallel 8y ago

I recently encountered an English equivalent 'ass glue'.

toolslive 8y ago

2 Comments: - It's common Chess vocabulary. Sometimes you need to work for hours to be able to win a technical position. Sitzfleisch is what it takes to do this. - The same word (with the same meaning) exists in Dutch: zitvlees.

mrleiter 8y ago

Experienced the same thing in Austria: I'm from the most western part, which mostly has alemannic and rhaeto-romance influence and the work ethic is "german". You have Sitzfleisch, I go to work/university at 7am and after maybe 5-10mins of relaxing, I get start working/studying. I take a break at midday and a short one in the afternoon and leave around 5.30/6pm People at the very eastern end of Austria, like Vienna, are far less "German". Their work ethic is much more relaxed, and like user wirrbel pointed out, they stay late to work, simply because they start later and get less work done in the same amount of time.

austrianguy 8y ago
Very eastern end Austrian here: Working from 7:30am to 5pm. Cannot understand the German work ethic and the often seen German workaholics. You work to live, you do not live to work!
- Nux 8y ago
  I hear that a lot whenever I'm holidaying in Greece. I totally agree with it. :-)
- TurboHaskal 8y ago
  I’ve been working in Germany for a decade and I’ve unfortunately never witnessed this so called German work ethic. I do hear about it a lot specially when talking about my home country and ironically during coffee breaks.

neftaly 8y ago

Related, the book "Dreams of Earth and Sky" by Freeman Dyson: "Why did [Oppenheimer] not succeed in scientific research as brilliantly as he succeeded in soldiering and administration? I believe the main reason why he failed was a lack of Sitzfleisch. Sitzfleisch is a German word with no equivalent in English. The literal translation is “Sitflesh.” https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/why_did_he_not_succeed_in_scientific_research_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/... https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=+reason+why+he+failed+was+a+lack+sitzfleisch&source=bl&ots=Zm95CRp9Ev&sig=ZzCpKbJSJAENfEVDd_Ld199eXIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibppLBpqPdAhWBKnwKHXikDYYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=reason%20why%20he%20failed%20was%20a%20lack%20sitzfleisch&f=false https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lp...

fogetti 8y ago

"Before employees can work on increasing their productivity, they need to realise that they are underproductive" This is seriously flawed (and over-generalizing). This basically assumes that the cause of underproductivity lies with the employee. Where are the arguments which are supporting this??

falsedan 8y ago
If an employee is unproductive because they are unmotivated, they do have the self-empowerment to say “this project isn’t motivating for me, let’s reassign me/plan for a more motivating project next/go over what the stakeholders need from this”. If they are lacking the skills required to succeed at the project, they can go for training/get more experience from completing a similar, smaller project. And if they are apathetic and feel like they can avoid redundancy by putting in the minimal effort, they can look for a new job. Sometimes the cause is external, like poor & changing requirements or wishful planning, or a bad personal relationship with coworkers, but even then the employee can feed that back to management. If they choose not to act on this feedback, see the ‘apathy’ option above. Source is self-management on solo projects.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]