Thinking | Workplace
We Have to be Comfortable with Ourselves if We Want to Escape the 9–5 Hamster Wheel
How many of us are comfortable being ourselves?
Everyone around me talks about escaping from the cubicle hell. Yet, most of them put their head down in the office. I find this rather interesting. It is in direct contrast to what their intent is!
This holds true even in the Pandemic Age.
While behavior may differ working in the office and at home, they continue to avoid more work and credit. Before I proceed, let me go through the different behaviors of the aspiring 9–5 corporate escapees in the office and when they are working from home.
These are the behaviors exhibited in the office: -
- Corner desk.
- Seated and hidden behind a firewall of colleagues.
- Heads down, buried in work.
- Avoid opportunities for individual credit, such as department presentations.
- Zero soundbites. No comments, no opinions.
In short, it is hard to notice their presence.
And do not get me wrong. People work very hard. It also applies to those who make themselves heard.
Such behaviors may have disappeared in the Pandemic Age. That is not because the aspiring corporate escapees decide to change the way they operate.
It is because we no longer need to be in an office.
Therefore, such behaviors are no longer observable. However, new behaviors started appearing as we continue to work from home: -
- Video cameras off during virtual meetings.
- Muted microphones in a virtual conference room.
- Presenters talk to their laptops without showing their faces.
- Avoiding meetings altogether in the name of completing their work.
These behaviors are not exactly new. A new environment calls for new ways to avoid the limelight.
People are weird.
We have always blamed modern management practices for dehumanizing our presence through the use of spreadsheets. We are just a headcount on a spreadsheet, as they always say.
Thank you, smooth-talker. That is just one end of the spectrum.
The thing is, many people want to live a life of workplace peace. They do not want their static equilibrium to be disrupted.
Many aspiring corporate escapees treat the office as a manufacturing plant. They punch the invisible clock at 9 in the morning and repeat the action at 5 in the evening.
We need to peel more layers of this 9–5 onion.
We have to ask this question.
“How do people ring fence their work commitment to the 9–5 so precisely?”
We do not love our jobs. Only a minority does.
For many of us, we get ourselves employed to pay our bills. That is fine in our 20s and early 30s because we have a higher tolerance for annoying workplace characters and backward manual practices emphasizing efficiency.
Efficiency is a buzzword. It is not what it sounds.
We love efficiency. It is not because we get to do more within the same amount of time. Efficiency allows us to numb our daily work experience by not feeling the pain of executing meaningless work.
In that regard, digital transformation poses a threat to our psychological auto-pilot feature.
How many times have you heard of the following?
“Digital transformation? Why? Sorry, I am busy.”
The basic premise of life is to find meaning unique to us. That keeps us going.
There is no point in retiring at 40 years of age if we have no direction in life. Humans are poised to live until the average age of 88 for females and 85 for males. What are we going to do for the next 45 years?
We cannot be rotting our existence away.
Many people around me believed they have found their answer.
“I am going escape the 9–5 hamster wheel and be an entrepreneur!”
Tough shit, buddy. Here is why.
Entrepreneurs market themselves a lot. That explains why they produce endless pieces of content on social media, using various formats such as text, audio, video, and live stream.
They need to have people know their presence and what they sell to have a shot at living a life that they want.
A side-note.
Do not be fooled by Tesla’s $0 marketing strategy.
Tesla Motors has no advertising, no ad agency, no CMO, no dealer network. And that’s no problem. — AdvertisingAge
Yeah, but have you tried searching for Elon Musk on YouTube?
There must be millions of videos, at least. Elon has given multiple interviews to share his insights about the future, about Tesla, about his business ordeals, about never giving up, about running a company.
Have you tried following Elon Musk on Twitter?
He tweets a lot. Daily.
So, while he may not have a company budget for marketing & advertising, he promotes the company, the electric vehicles, and his stories relentlessly.
His working desk is in the middle, not at the corner, of an automobile factory floor.
Everyone can see him.
Elon does not hop on the 9–5 hamster wheel either. He is known to work for 23 hours straight during his tenure in PayPal as a Chief Executive Officer.
“We all worked 20 hours a day, and he worked 23 hours,” Julie Ankenbrandt said in regards to working with Musk at the start-up X.com, which eventually lead to PayPal.
And all these stories point to the following: -
- Elon is comfortable giving interviews in his own name.
- He does not do his work and submit it to his boss, then heads home to sleep.
- He tells stories of his struggles, binding his companies, products to his name.
- Elon speaks his mind. He does not hide his thoughts.
- He operates as if he is the center of the universe. There is no hiding.
Are we ready for that?
Aldric
About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
