| Once they got the workload down by investing in infrastructure, the castaways became fairly
comfortable in their lives on the island. In fact, many of them began spending their extra time on hobbies and
other interests. Soon, they began to think of this spare time as their own, something they had a right to, and
they began trying to sneak more free time for themselves by neglecting their duties. Slowly but surely, the shelters
began to fall apart again, the gardens became weed infested, the fishing nets developed tears. One day, they met
to talk about all these problems, and decided they would have to increase their work hours for a while to get everything
into good repair again. Some of the castaways didn't like this at all. They had grown to think of all their extra time as their own, and they didn't like any of it being taken away from them. But they soon realized that if they didn't make an effort to fix the problems that were developing now, these problems would only get worse, until soon, everyone would have to start working all day every day again just to survive. And they understood that the way to work fewer hours in the future was to put in the hours now to set things right again. For a few weeks, the castaways greatly increased their usual working hours, and they soon did set things right, and even went beyond that to add some new infrastructure to the island. They built a water storage tank that collected rain, and invented a better fishing net that caught more fish. After their new burst of hard work, they brought the workload on the island down to about one third of a day. Then, disaster struck. A great storm hit the island, destroying most of their crops and seriously damaging the shelters. The water tank broke, and all their fishing nets were lost at sea. When the storm finally ended, they were almost where they started when they first landed on the island. They wasted no time increasing their workload again, and this time there were no complaints, since everybody saw clearly that the issue was survival. They worked from sunrise to sunset for months to rebuild all that they had lost. |
| prev |