Relax. It's Just a Job.

Originally published on LinkedIn on 26/02/17

What do you want to be when you grow up? That’s the perennial question asked of children when they’re, frankly, too young to know or care. The question engenders a belief in many of us within our early years that we are defined by our work, or at least that our occupation is a central part of our identity. As we grow older, we inevitably come across parents who gush about how their daughters are marrying doctors and lawyers, revelling in the thought of the assumed money and success associated with those professions. We also come across beaming parents who tell of how their children are making their way in the world. Throughout our lives, society tells us in so many ways that our jobs are central to our identity, our place in the world and even our inherent worth. It’s no wonder, then, that we take our jobs so seriously. Sometimes too seriously, perhaps, when we put them at the very centre of our lives.

I recall a visit to a good friend of mine, Mike, some time ago. Mike is probably one of the wisest, most perceptive people that I know and he picked up that I was taking my job too seriously, allowing myself to become overly concerned with things that were beyond my control in the workplace at the expense of other more important things. His question to me, which ultimately shifted my mindset, was, “Why care so much about something that you have so little control over?” It was the right question at that particular time for me to go away and ponder.

At the airport on my way home from visiting Mike, I felt drawn (as I often do) to the bookshop. Interestingly, it was there that a copy of Thoreau’s classic Walden caught my eye. The book seemed to stand out to me and I felt prompted to buy it, so I duly bought it. The reason for my attraction to the book became clear as I began reading it on the journey home. Apparently, Thoreau also observed men who took their work too seriously in the mid-nineteenth century.

“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that… He has no time to be anything but a machine.”

Although Thoreau was writing with industrial age workers in mind, do we sometimes allow ourselves too little time, or headspace, to be anything but “machines” in the knowledge age? If so, this comes at a price.

There are very real consequences to overworking, which may include poor health, stress, strained personal and professional relationships, loss of productivity and general unhappiness, which may ultimately lead to isolation and burnout. And burnout, by the way, not only affects the individual, but also the balance sheet.

Let’s now look at our expectations and assumptions about work, which also influence the role that we allow it to play in our lives.

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” - William Shakespeare 

In a recent article, FT columnist Lucy Kellaway asked the question, Why is work making us miserable?. As she writes:

“We are in the middle of what Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor at UCL in London, calls an “epidemic of disengagement”. Most surveys show less than a third of workers care for their jobs, and the long-term trend is getting worse. In the UK there is some evidence we like our jobs a good deal less than we did in the 1960s.”

Kellaway also notes that, broadly speaking, workplace conditions are far better now than they were in the 1960s. Why, then, is workplace satisfaction so low? The answer, she concludes, lies in the fact that heightened worker expectations have outstripped workplace improvements. A key factor in the rapid rise of workers’ expectations is, as she puts it, “the corporate obsession with happiness” (this being a key cause of unhappiness in itself).

But there are other voices and other narratives at play in setting such high expectations of work. Take, for example, leadership writer Simon Sinek who “teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people”. He has “a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home everyday feeling fulfilled by their work”. Sinek’s cause is, without doubt, a noble one; it would be wonderful if we were all inspired by our workplace leaders and genuinely fulfilled by our work. But there are a couple of issues with this. For instance, what do Sinek’s followers and fans who aren’t inspired or fulfilled in the workplace do prior to his achievement of his goal? Do they, in the meantime, live with the expectation that they should be both inspired and fulfilled within the workplace? If so, many of them will almost certainly be disappointed.

Jeffrey Pfeffer puts it like this in his book Leadership BS:

“Workplaces are mostly - and there are obviously notable exceptions - not what many people apparently seek from them: communal settings in which people take care of each other, provide economic security and social support, and possibly even provide meaning and purpose from the work people do. Of course a few organizations… do all these things. But don’t count on your place of employment being one of them.”

Scottish philosopher and father of modern economics, Adam Smith, put it another way when he wrote:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.”

In relation to Sinek’s cause for workplace inspiration and fulfilment, both Pfeffer and Smith might as well be saying, “Get real! Your job isn’t supposed to inspire you or give you fulfilment. It’s just a job.”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.” - Abraham Lincoln 

Before anyone gets the impression that I’m letting bad bosses and toxic workplaces off the hook, I’m not. And I fully appreciate the importance of job satisfaction, not least because of the need for the vast majority of us to work for a significant proportion of the week in order to make ends meet. I also believe that businesses whose staff are inspired and fulfilled will reap the rewards from such a workforce. That said, it is counter-productive, when looking for job satisfaction, for us to expect our work to be something that it isn’t inherently supposed to be and in all likelihood never will be i.e. a primary source of inspiration and fulfilment.

So, what are my suggestions to ensure that we don’t end up chronically frustrated in our work? In summary, three things. Firstly, change your expectations of work and what your job is supposed to give you. You are not your job and you should not allow it to define you or your personal worth (I’ve written another post relating to this: Image, Identity and the Social Mirror).

Secondly, realise that your job probably isn’t as important as you think it is. Obtaining better balance in your life, without an over-emphasis on work, is a better way to be effective and efficient in the workplace over the longterm. Focus on what you can do, the influence you can have on others and not on things that are beyond the scope of your influence, time and energy. This is critical to overcoming and avoiding workplace frustrations.

Finally, commit some time to the pursuit of your passions and development of your talents outside of work through hobbies and meaningful personal development. These things are much more likely to help you to find inspiration, fulfilment and meaning than cool workplaces that offer fußball tables, free pizza, and a relaxed dress code. Want to learn something new? Buy a book for £/$14.99 and study from it… Find a YouTube video… Go online and connect with someone who can teach you… Join a sports club, learn an instrument, write a blog, set up your own company… Do whatever you like within the time that you’ve set aside outside of work. Why should we think to outsource our self-actualisation to our employers when there are multiple options through which we can our pursue passions and interests, and develop new talents?

I feel it appropriate to conclude with John Lennon’s putative, and oft-quoted, response to the question posed at the beginning of this article:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

I am convinced that the more we come to understand work, what it is and what it isn’t supposed to be, the more successful we’ll be in finding happiness and fulfilment in our lives.