Why we like to work.
Everybody is different, and it seems like a worthwhile thing to say before we kick off this blog. Writing is really a point of view which doesn’t reflect an immutable truth. This is actually one reason I’ve chosen to bake my personality into my writing so that you can know, without too much consideration, that I’m not telling you how the world works, or what to do, or how to think, but more simply reflecting on my own experiences.
Finding the right work which makes you tick is one thing, but finding the right place and people is quite another. The good news is that as time goes by, you become more experienced, which is valued in the workplace, and as a result, you can be more selective.
I’ve had a few instructive experiences around work; here are some very early ones in chronological order.
When I was 16 or 17, my friend and I got a job as data entry clerks at a secondary school during the summer; I don’t remember what the data entry was, but I’m going to say typing in school application forms. The entry requirement for this assignment was being able to type quickly; check.
This was both the wrong job and the wrong people. I can’t be sure, but I feel like the administration staff didn’t like us; we were literally henpecked. The two of us weren’t allowed to talk to each other for reasons still largely unknown and unfathomable.
In the middle of day two, we quit and stormed out, only to find out the car wouldn’t start (lights left on). We sat forlornly in the car park for a few hours waiting for help; our now ex-colleagues/nemeses poured out of work at the end of the day whilst we both tried to shrink down and appear unnoticed in our stranded vehicle.
Fail.
When I was about 18 or so, I was at university and running low on beer tokens; I took shift work packing magazines. This was, again, the wrong work and probably the right people (we shall never know, reader!). On the first day, I announced to the hard-working and diligent people on the production line that I was here expressly to save up for a sabbatical in Mexico (I never went). This did not endear me with the crew.
At the end of day one, I could barely move; I was physically exhausted and had a newfound respect for the process of earning money in the wider world. I went back to my student friends, had a few pints at the students union and went to bed. I slept incredibly soundly, so much so that I missed my alarm and didn’t turn up on day 2. That was the end of that.
Fail.
Hitting my stride in my twenties, I got a job (thanks to my brother) for a cutlery importer in Sheffield. It was my first outing self-employed, and the remit was to build a software solution for managing the warehouse and forecasting stock. It was important to get the forecasting right as the knives and forks took around six months to arrive from China once ordered. I wrote a wonderous piece of software, at least that’s how I’m caring to remember it. On the allotted launch day, I rocked up and installed the software in the warehouse, accounts department and so on. No-one wanted to use it. This was the right work, but the wrong people.
Work has a way of detonating life’s lessons right in the centre of your field of view. This one was that no matter how great you think a solution is, unless you figure out how to drive adoption, it is no solution at all.
I was pretty proud of what I’d built, and there was a payload of personal satisfaction to this, but it was muted by not being widely used. This would be a reoccurring theme in software development.
That was a nice dip into nostalgia for me; I’ve plenty more work stories in my back pocket, which, given the right subject and willingness of my audience, I will cough up in another post, but for now, let’s move onto the title of this blog post.
Why do we work? Hopefully, the confluence of some of the above stories will illustrate that, like a fantastic chocolate cake, the ingredients are important.
Understanding in your own context what the right work is, and the sort of people you want to work with can take a while, years and years perhaps. However, once you’ve nailed this down, the beauty of working will become apparent to you.
The satisfaction of a job well done after a hard day. The entertaining but professionally meaningful conversation you had over a shared whiteboard or with your fellow server at a bar. That moment when you’ve reached the lowest financial ebb, which, due to good planning, coincides with the last day of the month and a paycheck skidding to a halt in the barren desert of your bank account.
All these things and more are fantastic reasons to work, not forgetting the necessity most of us face needing to “make bank” to keep the lights on.
But, there’s another elusive benefit of work, which is often overlooked (and that I’ve saved to the very last bit of the blog). Distraction.
Life is a complex hairball of personal worry, anxiousness, consistent searching for meaning, loss, finding and discovery, tiredness, sleeplessness and so on. There are few of us lucky enough to exist in a plane of constant and elevated happiness. Work brings respite to this, moments or days where you know what you need to do, how you fit in and what the end result should be.
Work brings structure and certainty to our lives. This is hugely comforting and explains why many people like to work. We can switch off complex emotions and take a rest from ourselves to find purpose alongside others in a shared goal.
I do like to work; I’ve found the right work and continue to seek out the right people to work with.
Thank you, friends and readers, for joining me on this little outing to the working world. It’s been, as always, a pleasure to share with you. I’ll save my usual spiel about being too busy to write because by now, you’ll know me well enough to understand I’ve been working. Until next time.