Today is Monday March 15th 2010. I'm not sure where to begin today. For starters I worked today and thus found a quote related to work. Today's quote is a loaded statement. It's probably a good place to start to be clear on something for today's blog:
- Work is physical and mental effort or activity. I'll assume work = tasks you do.
- Job is principal activity you do in your life to earn money. I'll assume job = tasks you do, people, place and pay.
I have to say from the outset that many people I've come across in my life simply do not enjoy their job. They might enjoy their work, but not their job. It could stem from any number of reasons. Too many hours, too few challenges, a disagreeable boss or colleague to name a few. And if you own your own business that list grows because you are dealing with the many (or few) people who YOU need to keep happy with their work and their job.
For the rest of this discussion I am going to assume the person quoted is suggesting "work" is equal to my above definition of job. With that, I agree with this quote. You have to be happy with your job to be happy in life. If you spend 45-55 hours per week at your job, you spend roughly one third of your life there. If you are unhappy with your job it may deceivingly filter into other areas of your life and happiness that you care not to admit. People spend so much time engulfed in profession that it takes time away from their personal and social lives. Jobs are always at home; they travel home with us every day in today's world of hand held phone/email devices. I played that game during my last job. Part of the job description should have been "Must be available by home phone, mobile phone and email at all hours of day". Like it or not, it's where society, the job market and the information superhighway have come to. Even if you can truly say that you are happy and love your job, I bet you can also admit that you get overwhelmed and stressed out by it. Is that finding pleasure in your work/job like the quote says? Probably not, but if you can multi-task, handle adversity well and get along with different types of people, then you can probably find balance, happiness and some pleasure within your job...assuming you like the work that you do.
I'll tell you a secret about this quote. It was from a French memoir writer who passed away in the 1600's. I am not suggesting that loving a job was any easier back then, but I believe the world in general was less stressful. There were just fewer ways for people, media and technology to impact the world as it does today. This leads me to believe the quote is missing something. That is, stress being a contributing factor with job happiness. If you can control stress, job-related or external-to-job, then job happiness might be more attainable.
Job-related stresses are the biggest problem. Some are in your control. An individually tasked deadline, a production line mistake and a failed sales attempt can arguably be in your control. Unfortunately stress can be out of your control too. Even if you are the owner of a one person (you) consulting firm, clients stresses become your stresses. In larger organizations problems can multiply just based on numbers of employees. Performance reviews, salary adjustments, group deadlines, group communications; whatever the subject matter, the more people there are the more potential "out of your control" stresses there can be.
In many cases stressful jobs are not because of the job itself, but because of what society (external-to-job) has directly or indirectly added as additional work and stress. Society is demanding and challenging and it impacts everyone in different way. An example of this would be the stress that comes with raising a family. Raising a family has always been about, but not limited to education, religion and core values. Even the priority of those three things have changed over the years. Now more than ever we have to put safety into the everyday raising of a family. When I was a child, safety was a concern, but it more related to seatbelt safety and not a parental leniency on letting their children go out and "play". Through the Internet, people have global access to anyone in a more deceiving way. This is scary and brought into the job, this type of stress can make any person, and those around them, unhappy on the job.
My summarizing thoughts are that all jobs are stressful to some degree and a person may love their work (somewhat controlled), but be unhappy with their job (somewhat uncontrollable).
Today's picture of the day is of Shilo. She is Elevation Imaging's mascot; the dog of manager Tim. She is always a welcome site when I walk into my photography job. I know she is happy to be at her job having people (and food) around her, getting up to go outside and sleeping whenever she wants to. Maybe that is a good formula for job happiness? For me, it comes down to four factors:
- The people (direct reports, who you report to and all colleagues included)
- The place (culture)
- The responsibilities (your tasks)
- The pay (money is important, but it's not everything)
If job stress is controlled and you like all those, your job happiness is in good shape. The rest is in society's hands and how you handle society's good and bad madness. Hope you are all well and good night from Telluride.
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