Number 1: Lousy Work/Life Balance
According to ‘popular wisdom’, no one lies on their death bed and thinks to themselves, ‘I really wish I’d spent more time at work.’
Or do they?
Perhaps, out there, there’s some lucky fellow who has, or had, this amazing job, and they either did, or are likely to, lie on their death bed and wish they’d spent more time in the office. Who could that person be?
Let’s consider some possible candidates:
CONTESTANT NUMBER 1:
TOM HANKS A-LIST HOLLYWOOD ACTOR
You know, I bet even Mr Hanks gets fed up with being an A-list Hollywood Actor. It’s not all glitz, you know. For one thing, there’s the paparazzi, constantly hounding Britney Spears and ignoring Tom. What exactly does an A-list actor have to do to get his picture on the front of a few magazines these days? Where’s the respect? What happened to the days when raw talent was enough to get you noticed? Nowadays those press guys are only interested in shoving a camera in your face when you’re face down in a puddle of something foul.
Will Tom be wishing he spent more time at work when the time comes to visit the big awards ceremony in the sky? Not a chance.
CONTESTANT NUMBER 2:
BILL GATES CREATOR OF MICROSOFT
Being the second richest man on the planet2 must be quite a buzz.
Thing is though, even if Bill decided to phone in sick, and to lie in bed for the rest of his life, he’d still be amongst the richest people that have ever lived – he doesn’t actually have to work at it any more.
Now he might lie on his death bed and have regrets about Windows 95, Windows Vista, and Office 2007 – as well he should – but that would be a desire to atone for his crimes to humanity. In many ways those heinous errors of judgement might have actually been avoided if Bill had stayed at home once in a while. So when the time comes and Dr Watson walks into the room to tell Bill that there’s been an unexpected error in his Life and it needs to Shut Down, will he wish he’d spent more time at the office?
No.
Next.
CONTESTANT NUMBER 3:
JULIO CASI AMOREO WORLD’S GREATEST LOVER, MALE ESCORT & FIGMENT OF PETER JONES’S IMAGINATION
Maybe there’s someone out there who gets paid to make love to the world’s most fabulously gorgeous women. (What? It could happen!)
On his death bed in his villa, somewhere in southern Italy, surrounded by beautiful, grief-stricken lovers, Julio looks around him and, as a gentle breeze wafts in through the window and plays with his hair, he realises that even though he was managing three or four ladies, every day, for the past twenty years, he still failed to get to them all.
Maybe Julio will wish he’d worked more.
Well done. We thought of someone. Though we had to make him up. And you and I are probably in the minority for believing such a job can be described as ‘work’.
Actually, it occurs to me that we probably need to take a moment to define what ‘work’ is.
This isn’t the dictionary definition, but it’s one that feels right to me:
Work is:
Anything you have to do (be that earning money, picking the kids up from school, paying bills, sorting through your post, chores, family commitments …)
Doing whatever it is you need to do to sustain your life (earning money, robbing banks, living off the land …)
And, this being the case, here are some interesting things I’ve noticed about ‘work’:
Most of us are conditioned to believe that we must work. (Sure, many of us have to work, to earn money for food, clothes, and to keep a home running – but the conditioning is actually a belief that we must work, and that we’re lazy, or stupid, or not pulling our weight if we don’t.)
Work tends to fill the space available.
Some bright spark decided that the average working week should be five days out of seven. Five out of seven!
This being the case it’s ridiculously easy to end up with a situation where work totally dominates your life. Where it’s virtually the only thing you do during waking hours.
Try this simple exercise:
Taking no more than thirty seconds, think of three things you did in the last twenty-four hours that don’t fall under my definition of ‘work’.
So, you’re done? What were your three things?
Were they …
1 eating,
2 watching TV, and
3 sleeping?
If you had something better on your list (I’ll let you off if you ‘went out for dinner’) did it take you more than thirty seconds to come up with your list?
Now, I’m not suggesting for one moment that work isn’t necessary and is somehow a bad thing. I’m not proposing that we eliminate work. Work is necessary. But for most people the balance of work and ‘everything else’ in their life is all wrong. And in many cases the ‘everything else’ lacks substance.
Reader ‘Anon’ emailed me:
‘I’m sure a lot of us are in a job we don’t enjoy for one reason or another, and let’s face it, the recession has left us well and truly stuck – it seems far too scary to leave the secure job we have, even if it does make us miserable! I was wondering if you had any practical tips on how to survive doing things which make us unhappy but that we HAVE TO do? Is there a way of finding happiness in a job when we can’t stand our work colleagues or are treated badly by the powers above? Thanks Peter.’
‘Dear Anon,
Not that long ago I used to work in the banking industry. I spent my days telling rich men how to get richer by making poor people poorer. I used to leave the house in the morning and make some passing quip to my wife about how I was off to torture some souls. She’d ask me if I’d forgotten my pitch fork and horns. Like so many things said in jest, it wasn’t actually very funny.
Finally, two years ago I couldn’t take it any more. I went back to see the therapist who helped me through the loss of my wife, and six months later I finally summoned the courage to leave the security of a regular pay cheque behind.
Financially it’s been a tough few months. And as I write this now I’m not quite out of the woods. My outgoings still outweigh my income but ... I have a plan. If things keep going the way they have been I should be supporting myself as a full-time author by the end of the year.
So
