What matters at work

Ever since I read Sapiens last year, I’ve began looking at our current existence in context of everything humans have done so far. I mean humans and the whole notion of work and industry. It’s all so brand new and so made up. It’s such a modern invention that it’s impossible to believe that we’ve all bought in to the belief that this is how things always have been and will continue to be forever.

But it wasn’t always like this. Before the Agricultural Revolution some 12,000 years ago, humans were nomadic tribes that kept moving from place to place until they depleted all the resources of a location. It was only after farming became a thing that it made sense to build a shelter and just stay there for a while, raising generations of families to take care of the farm. Because of daylight limitations, work had to happen during the hours that the sun was out. And it stayed like this for a long, long time.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the 8-hour workday became a thing. Machines had an optimal cycle time that they should be run at, and factories needed multiple workers simultaneously running sequential machines in a production line. And once an 8-hr cycle was complete, you clocked out and left for the day. But now, our methods of production have become automated, tooling and work has gone entirely digital, and many jobs can be done entirely remotely. And yet, we’re stuck to the 8-hour workday established in the Industrial Era.

It’s tough to fathom for an everyday worker that all of this is very, very new. None of this existed a mere 300 years ago, and yet here we are, pretending like it’s all normal. Is there any hope of breaking out of this cycle? Not anytime soon. This five-day workweek actually puts undue pressure on people to do big things on the weekends, forcing them to maximize every minute they’re not at work by doing something nice for themselves like treating themselves to a lavish dinner or buying something expensive, in turn fueling the consumerist machine that feeds the system in the first place. This of course does nothing but leave you more exhausted for the next week at work, which in turn leads to even more tiredness. Then you’re tempted to take a two-week vacation and repeat the cycle once you return.

So if we’re stuck with this, how do we make the most of work? There’s an endless number of jobs out there and a huge variety of roles and industries, so how do you find something to make the most out of the 40+ hours you spend at the office every week? Well, for starters, it helps if you like what you do. I love design and I get to do design at work, which I truly cannot believe to this day. Someone pays me for something I like doing. That’s a luxury most people in the world can’t afford, and I’m glad to have found that calling so early in life.

No matter how much you love the job, there will be some amount of grunt work. Some documentation to put up or some meeting to attend or some review session to force yourself to go to. This is the nature of work and you’ll eventually get used to it. Even if you were running your own freelance business, you’d have invoices to send and revenue projections to fix or estimate to ensure you can pay the bills. There’s no escaping it.

Alright, so let’s say you already like what you do. There will still be the slow onset of sameness that starts to crawl in ones the novelty of the new industry or new company or new product wears off. You’re going in, doing the thing, and leaving. The routine sets in and you start getting bored. Eventually, you come to grips with the fact that you can’t stand it anymore and you move on (#mylife). Is there anything at all you can do in this phase to make sure work stays satisfying and fun?

There sure is. I’ve learned that the people I work with are the greatest motivator in ensuring I wake up every day actually feeling excited to go into work. I’ve only been in the working world for about seven or so years now, but I absolutely dreaded going into work where the people were boring or uninteresting. Even in the worst jobs I’ve had, I at least had the interactions with the great people to look forward to during the day. There’s that quote which goes something along the lines of “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with”, and you’re spending a lot of time with these people at work. You might as well make sure they’re a good bunch, because it’ll start to affect you in ways you might not even realize.

Another big factor is commute. I hated driving forty minutes to work in my first job. It was the absolute worst. Getting stalled by traffic, having to shovel snow off my car in the winter, and getting annoyed by the driving of other people was not the way I wanted to start or end my workday. Today, I walk to work in twenty minutes door to door and I get to walk through a beautiful garden and lake on the way, picking up a coffee from one of four different spots on the way every day. This does wonders for the state I walk into the office in every morning. I’ve always got a smile on my face and am generally more open to talking to people.

Distractions also play a big role. Open offices are all the fad these days, and it can get really annoying for an introvert to put up with this. But if you’ve got spaces to camp out in or just put headphones on and tune out the world around you to focus on work, it helps immensely. While I enjoy working in a place where anyone can tap me on the shoulder at any time and ask me anything, I also prefer my privacy and working in isolation for long periods of time without being interrupted. Being able to control this schedule and having it be flexible enough for my needs has dramatically increased my satisfaction at work.

Then there’s things that don’t matter as much. I’ve noticed that it doesn’t really matter that much to me about what the product I’m working on is. Every company pretends like the product they’ve got is exactly what the world needs to solve its problems. They pretend like the world would collapse without them and that they’re the saving grace of their industry. Let’s face it, nobody would care if any of the companies I worked at suddenly disappeared overnight. It’s okay to be real and honest about this. New products come and go all the time. There’s no reason to gloat and wrongly claim that this hot new thing is going to change the world forever.

I’ve also noticed that my boss or manager doesn’t make a huge difference to me. I’ve always been pretty good at knowing how effectively I’m performing and what I need to or need not be doing. I’ve never needed anyone to tell me otherwise, and I’ve had terrible managers and great managers. At no point in my career did I let their advice or opinion sway the way I operated in. I knew that what I was doing was the best for the product and our users given the constraints of the team I was working with and the people we had at our disposal. As long as that was true, any frustrations or praise the people above me had was coming from the headspace they were in. I never saw the feedback as a true reflection of my own work.

So yeah, as long as I prioritize the things that matter and not worry so much about the things that don’t, it seems to work out just fine. It’s really tough to find a place today where you know you’ll be happy for a while, and I’ve been moving to a new company every other year or so. At every place, I learn a bit about what I like and don’t like. I see what’s working and what’s not and try to course correct in my next role. It’s been an interesting way to explore what works for me, what I like, and what I don’t like. I’d highly suggest anyone in their twenties to do the same to figure out their preferences before committing to being at the same workplace for many years, because it’s a truly enlightening way of figuring out what actually matters to you at work.