You’re among the 3 billion people who work employed. Unless you work for a cool, modern company who allows working from home or anywhere, you have some kind of boss who tells you what things he wants to get you done and where you’re supposed to do them.
The office is structured according to what the company you work for thinks is best (cheap). Who you sit next to or opposite of is directed by your superiors. You’re like the hamster in the wheel. You can control how slow and fast you run. With regard to the size, material and surrounding of your wheel you have no say.
This is your workplace. Suck it or leave (the company). We live in the 21st century but unmodern workplaces are still in big existence. Well-being at the place of work is considered an unnecessary luxury. „Feeling good what your 24-30 days of vacation are for“, they say. You’re supposed to hate your workplace. Work is not about feeling good but to be productive.
For example, the workplaces in public agencies and authorities are the ridiculously little advance in terms of having a good time working. You’re not allowed to have the volume loud enough so you can listen to the radio during a monotonous task because your co-worker in the other rooms thinks it’s too loud. According to your boss, you’re supposed to have your doors open to your co-worker — yes, the same who demands to have radio being super low volume.
If your boss allowed closed doors, you could listen to the radio on moderate volume and your co-worker wouldn’t feel bothered at all. In fact, your co-worker is annoyed by your music because he/she constantly has something unexpressed in mind which he/she doesn’t have the guts to tell you. His/Her annoyance about the music is simply a displacement reaction to what really disturbs him/her.
People enter your room as they wish, ask you questions and interrupt you a thousand times a day. In an ideal world you, would set planned appointments for every face-to-face request, your doors would be shut, you would listen to the radio in loud enough volume and the sun would be shining into your room making it cozily warm, but not hot. You would have your second cup of coffee or an attentive colleague would be serving you a relaxing tea. Things would work smoothly and with ease.
This is a dream-like environment. Your goal is to come as close as possible to this dream – every day you work for someone else’s dream. You’re doing your boss a favor by helping him pursue his goals. Yes, you receive a compensation (your salary) but it’s not even close to how much you were worth if your boss paid you according to how much value you bring him in (monetary) return.
The takeaway from today: You enjoy work and are very good at it. You have a pleasant time when it comes to working. Now add colleagues, work load, time pressure, interruptions, office rules to the equation. The more unpleasant one or more of them are, the more you suffer. That’s when you need to change things. It’s not the work you’ll want to change but the conditions and environment your work happens in.
For example, I’m enjoying cleaning private households because I enjoy meeting new people, driving around Berlin and making them happy with a clean home. I like this kind of work. Even more, I like the work conditions. I run my own business, am my own boss, choose when I want to work and let marketing, acquisition and invoicing do an agency. The work conditions and the work itself is pure enjoyment for me, including the fatigue that comes with this physically demanding labor.
Again, you’re not tired of your work but annoyed about how your work conditions drain your energy level. Next time you’re tired, ask yourself where this fatigue comes from.
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This was episode 58 of the #weekdaykickoff 🌊. Every weekday (Mon-Fri). Also find me on Anchor so we can talk — literally talk from person to person!
Also published on Medium.