Unless you live off the land or are independently wealthy, work is probably a central and important part of each week, or even every day. And there is good reason for that, to a degree. We work to gain something. Money, status, power, influence, whatever it is, there is a pay-off for your labor. Those are fine things in themselves. It is important, but I believe we diminish the human experience when we allow work to occupy a bigger piece of real estate than it ought to.
Maybe you're like me and you struggle to separate your identity from your job title sometimes. Or maybe it doesn't really matter what you're doing, as long as you are producing, you're able to believe that you have worth. But the moment that stops, you start lashing out at those closest to you. When was the last time you met someone new and the conversation did not resolve around the subject of work within 5 minutes? Or is it that you rarely ever get to meet new people because your job demands so much of your time? "Full-time" rarely means 40 hours a week anymore.
Sometimes I miss being a waiter at Bob Evans ("down on the farm"). And not just for the open access to biscuits and gravy, the revolving door of management, and the $2.65/hour wage. No, but I do miss working a job that has well-defined parameters and expectations. I'd show up at 4, work until close, and complete the same set of tasks each day. Then I would leave and work would stay. While the stench of stale grease may follow me home, there was no way for the job to infiltrate the rest of my life. Even if I was asked to pick up extra shifts, I could always decline. There is a lot I hated that job, but it had it's benefits.
My current job is the complete opposite. For starters, there are no biscuits and gravy. Ever. How sad indeed. But that's not the only important difference. I am a lawyer and I work in an environment that has an insatiable hunger for my time and tears. My job tries to follow me around like the Cozumel pygmy raccoon--they act all friendly, until you stop giving them your chips and then suddenly you have rabies.
Like so many, my job lends itself to overtime (without overtime pay, of course). I often, like today, receive work emails on Sunday. I almost never have a sense of completion because there are always more cases to read through, more revisions to make, or angles to analyze. It is hard to figure out where the line should be drawn between myself and my job. Frankly, it just isn't modeled well for me. Where do you draw the line in your life?
At the same time, I am trying to heed the building realization that I need to establish appropriate boundaries. When you give your job your everything, it becomes your everything. Yes, you should go hard when the clock is on, but there has to be an off switch. There has to be a life that is secret and separate from your day job. Otherwise you will become utterly uninteresting. I don't care if you get paid to solve the most cutting edge issues, you should be more than your resume.
A few months ago I was talking with a friend about the struggles of balancing it all. Work, kids, marriage, community, hobbies, self-care. It is hard to find the right tension between these different threads. He mentioned how consistently exhausted he is after work and how his son is always begging for psychical play time with him--between soccer, baseball, boxing, and wrestling, this kid could wear out the best of us. That's when it hit me clearer than ever: you're day-job has to be your part-time gig. The work you get paid to do should be subservient to the life you live. Your full-time "occupation" is your community: your spouse, your kids, your friends and family, and yourself.
I am not making the comparison to reduce the significance of intimate time spent with loved ones to something as trivial as an job. I am putting the two, your job and your life, next to each other because so many of us give our job the best of us. We emotionally and physically allot almost all we have to our work. I definitely understand going through seasons where a demanding project or an important transition will require more time and energy than normal. But when that become the normal pattern of your life, you've now just become a full-time employee and stopping living life full time.
Why is that important? Because you have so much more in you. You are worth so much more than what you get paid to do. Your capacity for engagement and joy and passion and creativity are unmatched and missing from your community when you fail to tune in. Oh, and it will kill you to keep going through that miserable routine. Even at 40-50 hours a week, you ought to conceptualize your job as the thing you do part-time. Don't just save a little in your reserves for the rest of living. Keep your good stuff. Keep the best of you for you and your community.
How is your part-time job keeping you from living a full-time life? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time, be blessed.
Sam
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I know how hard it was to work under a boss when I was doing PhD. In the Netherlands, PhD is considered a job, and for me, it was 24 hours job. I could hardly get few hours to sleep; it was terrible; I had no life, and I had to think ALL the time about my meeting with the boss, about showing him the results, and about reading lot of scientific articles and writing my papers, and trying to publish. Publishing was another huge pain, lol. My boss would have a lot of comments and he would make me do everything (every experiment) again, and when I wrote one paper without the involvement of my boss (after I was done with my PhD), I published it in a top journal, called Nature. To publish a paper in Nature is the dream of every scientist.
I am glad that now I am not working under any boss. I have a great life now.
Nice to meet you @ssimkins9 :)
Whoa, congratulations. I'm not a scientist at all and know that publishing in Nature is a big deal. It really is amazing how much difference a good or bad boss can make. I'm glad to hear you are in a much better place. Thanks for sharing.
What is the focus of your study/research?
So true really annoys me when the first question we ask each other is 'what do you do for a living?' I dont want to know that, I want to know what you're passionate about, what your dreams are, and what makes you tick!
That's what I like too; I am never interested in what a person is doing for living. I am interested in their personality, their interests, their goals; I like people for who they are.
Glad to know your thoughts
@tonysayers33 :)
Big time! And it is so hard to get people to go there. I have been trying to make more effort to lead my conversations by example.
Here is a paraphrase of actual conversations I have had:
"So, what do you do?"
"Oh uh, I'm in corporate finance. So, like mergers and acquisitions. A little bit of bankruptcy sometimes."
"Hmmm, that's a good question."
I think it is so hard for so many of us because we have actually grown detached from our dreams and passions. That is a big piece of my story. Thanks for your great comment and for driving the conversation deeper!
I friggin' love this.
Me too.
(no hash tag).
I started following your advice about six years ago. (That sounds odd! :). I really empathize with people who have much more time-demanding jobs than mine, but at the same time, I have seen that having lots of free time doesn’t mean someone automatically has a good work/life balance. I think a person will always struggle as long as they simply make work the biggest priority. It’s understandable, as we are conditioned to think that way in a myriad of ways. I live the idea of thinking of your job as your part-time gig. It has to be, because family requires more than a few hours left over at the end of each day. Again, touch for someone who is locked into a 60-80 per week job, which I would think is a safe estimate for a lot of lawyers.
To answer your question directly, my job is NOT keeping me from living my life! My tricks have been to use my commute to get my daily physical exercise, or at least a large chunk. I dress so that I can run and brisk walk up to 10 miles per day. From there, I actively learn about emerging tech so I can save time while also providing my students with a better experience. (This is something many of my colleagues are slow to understand). Every decision I make about my job gets considered partly in relation to how it will impact my time, energy, and ability to sustain my life priorities. For example, I do not teach extra classes in the summer even though that would provide a nice bump in income. It’s just not worth it. Finally, I simply do not take work home and I rarely think about work when I am not at work. All of these things, especially the last, take discipline, which takes practice. That might be why so many people just stick to the work mentality.
Awesome comment!
I love what you say here:
That is so true and I have seen that in my own life. Just because I have chunks of "free time" does not mean I am living into my priorities. I am really encouraged by your examples of drawing clear boundaries and finding ways to work with your situation to make the best of it (e.g. using the commute, implementing new tech).
The idea of turning down a bump in income is so backwards for most, but you clearly see that there is a real cost to your time. I think one of the problems in my industry is that there actually is not clearly defined link between working more and getting paid more. We work on a billable hours system, meaning we have to bill to a client X amount of hours each year (in my job, it breaks down to about 37.5/week). BUT, almost no one can actually bill 40 hours by working only 40. The motivator is somewhat of a stick, and somewhat of an ambiguous carrot (if you hit your hours, and the firm does well, and you might get a bonus). Plus, we are often dealing with very tight deadlines. For example, I am often given an assignment that needs to be turned around in 3-4 days (or less). And what if I am also working on something else in that window? I have refused to take on assignments at times, but that is usually not an option. If I am running a case, there is literally no one else who can just jump in and do the assignment.
Anyway, I am ranting, but I am thankful for your comment and inspired to find ways to improve my own balance. Cheers!
Excellent post and advice, as a " full time employee " can you separate your time between work and living life ? Not an easy task for most of us. I prioritize family but I do have great responsibilities at work, nothing life or death, but to the man that signs my paycheck it seems to be. I decided a few years ago that he doesn't get to help himself to my off time, if he deems it necessary it gets expensive. My rules, I'm good at what I do and he respects that.
Splendid comment. Thanks for this.
I love this. It always amazes me how much people can freak out about. I have a mentor who taught me the mantra "an urgent situation to me is not an urgent situation to anyone else." That is awesome that you not only have the leverage to establish your rules but that you actually had the courage to do so. I'm sure your family thanks you. :D
What do you do for work?
I'm a plant manager at a small very high volume low margin cut up shop. We make components for other companies out of various wooden composites.
So I live in Detroit. A town well-known for manufacturing. Terms like "plant manager" are part of my lexicon, BUT for some reason I read that whole first sentence as if you managed plants, like leafy, growing plants. And it fits until you get to "wooden composites." Haha. Thanks for sharing.
I struggle with time. All. the. time.
There is no way to make more time, no way to make my body outperform beyond it's reserves and only so much mental energy to go around.
I really need my mornings to do my best work, my best writing for the things I want to see changed. But, I have to go to my job -- where I must write for them instead.
I've tried to work around it in many ways. None of it matters once that mental battery is depleted for the day. Yesterday, I couldn't remember a word my friend had used in a conversation just the day before. In the morning, I could remember the word, but not in the afternoon or even (well it's now two days later) now do I remember the word.
Ideally, I could work 20-25 hours a week for someone else, in the afternoons. Until then, 40-50 hours is really 60-65 with the commute. Errands after work? Chores at home that need to be done? (Spent my weekend doing home repairs again wishing instead I was writing for Steemit).
And by the very end of the day? No more mental battery left.
It's frustrating.
I hear you. I actually do my best work in the evenings, but the same principle applies. I would love to go part-time, and my job does actually offer that on a case-by-case determination. I may explore it a little down the road. People like @jakeybrown who just told me that he went to 30 hrs, M-W, encourage me to find solutions that don't involve just quitting outright. Haha.
But like you say, it is more than just time. It really is mental and emotional space and energy. You cannot perform for all of your waking hours. There has to be rest.
Great read! Ive been thinking about a lot of these things lately! I also used to work in akitchen where work was simple and clearly defined. Hard work when needed but finished at the end of the day! Now im working on a phd. Stressful and never ending! Still dont know what I would prefer doing for the rest of my life, but definately not a 40 hour work week! Thanks for sharing!
Man, that does sound stressful. Major props to you. What is the focus of your PhD? I hope this time helps reveal for you what it is that you should be doing. Cheers!
Thanks! Its on computational fluid dynamics 8) Time will tell! Will see what happens :)
Well shoot dang! That sounds mighty impressive. Good on ya.