What Do You Want From Work, Anyway??
Unless it’s your dream job to sip margaritas on a beach somewhere far away from the colder climes of the world, you will inevitably find yourself waking up one morning to faint inner pangs of reticence. These feelings, of course, are directed toward leaving the warmth, comfort, and familiarity of your home to go to work.
And when you do, depending on who you are and your current situation, your mind may begin to wander a bit.
“Did I pick the right career?”
“I hate my job.”
“I’m stuck in life.”
“I have no options.”
“I have to work or else I’ll lose my house.”
A lot of times, these thoughts, instead of freeing us from the inner pangs we are experiencing, only make them worse.
We feel out of control, and as if we have no choice but to go do what we must in order to survive.
We may also temporarily experience thoughts of just up and leaving everything to boldly forge a new path.
“I should just quit.”
“I should switch careers.”
“I should go travel for a while.”
“Maybe I should go back to school.”
How we think about work is how we will end up acting about work.
But these thoughts aren’t deep enough. They are reactionary thoughts based on our immediate situation.
We need to take time to consider what the real problem is.
We don’t know what we want from work.
Many times, we do what we do for work because we needed a job, a job opportunity opened up, and we took it.
Then we stayed there because we needed the money.
Or because we didn’t know what else to do.
Career growth is a bit like compound interest. Once we’ve started in a career, and maybe even done pretty well in it, we are hesitant to uproot and start over. We are comfortable.
But is work giving us what we want from it?
There are two basic questions that I have been asking myself recently to determine what it is I actually want to spend 40+ hours of each week doing.
1. What do I want from work?
This is basic in many ways but rarely is it fleshed out as much as it should be. What do you want from work?
Well, money, for one. Most of us need to work in order to keep paying the mortgage, put food on the table, buy clothes. Then there are other monetary goals, such as saving for education, retirement, kids' college funds, vacation. Maybe you want to buy an apartment building and need $50,000 for the down payment.
But after that basic need has been met, what do you want from work besides?
Freedom? Do you want to be able to travel while you work? Do you want to have the option to work from home? Do you want to spend time with people every day? Do you want to work with your hands? Do you dream of creating things every day?
In your best-case scenario: what would work look like if there were no other voices or obstacles in the way?
It can be an enjoyable task to sit down with a fresh cup of coffee, a blank notepad, and the question “What do I want from work?”
Take a good hour to really think it through and write down some tangible and non-tangible items that you want your work to give you.
2. What do I want to give through working?
The second question is: What do I want to give through working?
This can be kind of like a “What do I want my legacy to be?” question.
What do you want to leave behind? Whether that’s every day, every week, or at the end of your career and life — what reputation, what do you want people to have because you worked and became great at what you did in your career?
Is it music? Is it money? Is it beautifully handcrafted wooden boats? Is it a new idea? Is it a new way of working? Is it a new way of thinking about an industry?
Not all of us will — by definition of scarcity — have the circumstances, time, and ability to leave a huge mark on all of society, but we can also ask this question with smaller groups in mind. What do I want to leave my family? Time well spent with them? Was I around to play Bird Bingo with my four-year-old son? Was I too distracted to notice and comment on my ten-year old’s drawings? Was I aware enough to listen to my middle child read?
This is the second question that has helped me gain some significant clarity when it comes to working.
Eventually, we all want to know that we saved enough to take care of ourselves in the years when we’re unable to work, and for our final expenses, but in the forty or more years that we get to be active and get up every day to make a difference — what are we accomplishing? What are we getting for our investment? Are we taking time to really think that through and make a conscious, well-informed decision?
Most of us only want to escape work because we haven’t taken the time to make it work for us.
We haven’t figured out why we are doing what we are, and we haven’t put in the thought, time, and money to create a work existence that gives us something meaningful and the opportunity to give something meaningful back.
So take time to sit with these questions.
And once you have made a decision — sit with it for a while.
Revise it.
Envision it.
Get excited about it.
And start acting to make it happen.
You may need to revise it a few times, but with tweaks here and there, some gentle (and not-so-gentle knocks from life,) I believe we all can find work within our individual contexts that give us a meaningful return on the time spent.
(I don’t think it will be sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere.)
