Launch T10 BLOG "The things we do for work"

We all have something in common about work - despite the fact we hold different jobs with different titles with different pay in different locations. When it comes to work, we live in a culture that loves to whinge. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense; whether it is justified or even whether anybody cares - we all need to have a good whinge at some point about some element of our job.

And when we stop and have a good look beyond the things we love about our jobs, we all have things that we don't enjoy about work. There is no job without something that we don't like - it just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because the problem is not the job; it's the person working the job. The problem is not that our boss is irritating; it's that our boss irritates us. The problem is not the pay of the job; the problem is that we are not getting paid enough for what we do. The reason why we can never find a job that we like is because the things we don't like come back to ourselves.

And so despite liking our work, or really anything about it at times, we expend gross numbers of hours and escessive amounts of effort into our jobs. We work hundreds of hours at unpaid overtime and get up to the shrieking alarm clock at ridiculous ours of the morning - all in the name of work. We put up with customers who don't even know what planet they are on at times and increase our stress levels to a point that is beyond normality - all in the name of work. And I wonder why we do the things we do for jobs we say we don't even want to be doing?

I think the answer lies in the shift in our thinking. We used to get warned against unlimited leisure and against apathy and against indifference and against laziness. We got ourselves so worried about not doing anything with our lives that we suddenly decided to take on everything, until we reach the point that we are at now where we can't do anything more. But although our ever-expanding work hours may seem like indentured slavery, it's now the cool thing to do - being over-stretched and stressed. Busyness, and not leisure, is now the new badge of honour and we wear it with such pride.

So where should we stand with work? I think we need to be somewhere in the middle of the two. I agree with the notion that we need to fight apathy and indifference and that our lives contain more meaning and potential than setting another high score on Guitar Hero, but I also feel that our bodies cannot physically keep up with the nature of our modern work. We need to fight the label that we wear at times that says being busy is cool and that having no time for anything other than our jobs is the way to be. Instead, let us take our jobs and our families and our church and our relationships, and work at it with all our hearts, as if working for the Lord.

DAN T