Work
Even the word is unpleasant. For children there is schoolwork (followed by homework), for homeowners there is housework, for those of us who like to buy groceries and keep a roof over our heads (without the gift of family money or lottery winnings) there's work-work. So much work.
There are countless jokes about work, like:
"What's your dream job?" "Well, in my dreams I don't work."
"Boss: 'Why aren't you working!' Worker: 'I didn't see you coming.'"
"Nothing ruins a good Friday like someone telling you tomorrow is Tuesday."
"My boss told me to have a good day--so I went home"
There are even songs, like Todd Rungren's anti-work anthem: "I don't want to work--I want to bang on the drum all day..." and Loverboy's "Everybody's workin' for the weekend...," both coming from the big-hair/fanny-pack era of the 1980s.
So are we really just working for the weekend? I mean, spending five dismal days for two days of fun seems like a tough trade-off. Why do we work so hard?
In the 1930s, Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled, In Praise of Idleness. In it, he challenges the notions that work is, in and of itself, virtuous, and that more work is necessarily better than less. (Sounds good already, doesn't it?) Even back then, he believed that in industrialized societies, four hours a day was enough work (paid reasonably) to satisfy basic needs. To say that people must work forty or fifty or more hours per week is just the owners of the companies conning the workers into making more money for the rich. Kind of like Elon Musk telling people they need to work 80-100 hours a week if they want to make a difference in the world. (Seems a bit self-serving, telling your salaried employees to double their work hours for the same pay. Now, Elon and I don't bowl together, so I can't be sure he isn't somehow compensating the workers for their extended hours, but it's hard not to question his motives and the motives of those who profit from the labor of others when they tell us others to work harder and harder, trading the brief time we have on this Earth for money.
What if you could meet your/your family's needs (note I'm saying needs, not wants) on four hours of work a day? What would you do with the rest of your time? Yes, some would nap and play video games like zombies or take up illicit-drug habits, but that's just some. What would most of us do? Might we take on another job that interests us? Spend more time on our relationships with family members and friends? Might we invent or create or explore or refresh?
The siren song of money is a tempting one. More work equals more money (or so we believe), and more money will make our lives inherently better...won't it? Sort of. That is, having more money typically shows up in the research as being better than having less, but we always have to worry about the trade-offs. Time passes so quickly. Spending long hours through long weeks over long years doing something uninspiring that lacks a sense of value or purpose is trading away a lot for money. When you read those studies that say somewhere between 40 and 53 percent of workers aren't happy in their jobs (one piece said 85% globally aren't satisfied with their work, but that seems a stretch to me), it has to make you wonder about the whole work thing.
Why do we work as long and as hard as we do? Is our cultural preoccupation with climbing corporate ladders and working long hours and priding ourselves on the accumulation of unused vacation/sick days making us happy and satisfied with our lives? Is it giving us a sense of fulfillment? Back when we had to work endlessly just to survive, we didn't have the luxury of asking such questions. Now many of us do, so we're stuck with that gnawing wondering: "Is this the best way to spend the few days I have?" (Your Life in Jelly Beans will make you wonder...)
This isn't one of those prescriptive posts telling you to quit your job and take up beekeeping, hoping the honey will be enough to pay the mortgage. But Russell's essay always makes me think. I'm an academic who works a job with a wonderfully flexible workday, with smart students I enjoy spending time with. Sure, there are things I don't love ("The teaching I do for free; you pay me to grade" is a common refrain among those of us without graduate assistants, and don't get me started on the committee meetings and task forces), but on the whole, the autonomy I have is great! And it even provides a sense of purpose, as I watch past students put things they've learned to use in making good lives for themselves. All in all, I feel pretty good about this career I bungled into. Sure, many people love their work and do it for that love. But many don't. And some hate what they do and struggle through the days each week until Friday.
How about you? If you don't feel so good about your own work, what might you do about it? There are plenty of people who make suggestions. You just have to be ready to consider the possibilities...
(There are lots of books you can read if you're in the "I wish I was doing something else" group. If you're an exploring student, Katherine Brooks' book is good; if you're already in the work world but wish you were doing something else if only you could figure out what that something else might be, try Burnett and Evans...)