Why Working All the Time Kills Its Purpose
Did you fall into the trap? I did.
There are tons of videos, podcasts, and articles about work. Thousands about productivity. Even more about developing your business and making ever more money. It’s easy to slowly slide into the trap of the hamster wheel. I recently found out that I was myself blindly running again and again in it.
Since our first years at school, we get taught that we have to work hard to make money. Our system expects us to work hour after hour, day after day, from early morning to late at night. Some days, in winter, we don’t even see the sun. All of this is built to have us make money. More and more money. Always.
Well, I asked myself one tiny question.
What, exactly, are we willing to make money for?
Several answers came to my mind: we need money to get a roof over our heads, eat, maintain our health, have a bit of comfort, and pay for our leisure time. I don’t know about you, but this all seems to make sense to me.
We can then summarize the answer in the following sentence: we use a part of our days to work, so we are able to sustain our life.
It seems all right, doesn’t it? Logical enough. Something’s bothering me though.
Look at what our lives are…
If you pay attention to what our lives are, there is no more balance. We work, then we work more, then we work even more, and we end up not having time anymore for our lives. We work from dawn to dusk, running after success and money, hoping it will offer us fulfilling lives. Something to be happy about.
So we work, in order to sustain our work lives. There’s even some kind of irony in all of this. We work so much that we don’t have time to exercise, so we pay — using the money we had a hard time making — to afford expensive gym memberships; we work so much that we don’t have time to cook our food anymore, so we call upon expensive delivery services, using the same money we had a hard time making.
Whereas if we worked less, we would make a bit less money but it would still cost less than using services to “buy back” our time, as we seem to see it.
Living is now a synonym for working. We are constantly working. We don’t even have time anymore to use our money in a way that makes us happy. Even out of the office, our mind is imprisoned in work-related thoughts and worries. We are working too much, so we are not working anymore. Working is a word that designates a period of time dedicated to actually getting some work done. If working is constant, it’s not working anymore, it’s how our lives are.
Maybe we should work less, and see our targets lowered. We should define exactly how much money we need to live, to be happy, to have a fulfilling life, and get back this work/life balance. We should stop being so ambitious about money and success, and start being ambitious about the core of our lives.
“Work to live, don’t live to work.” — Unknown author
I still haven’t figured out what the solutions could be, because we still have to make enough money to afford a living. But I can’t resign myself into this kind of life. I am seeking happiness, fulfillment. Not more and more money all the time. It’s very easy to fall into the trap because it’s everything that our society is expecting from us.
I think that our generation has to make it change. Work schemes are changing. More and more people are working independently. Young people seem to bear less and less the fact of sitting all day in offices. We aim to fresh air. Let’s figure out how we can bring it into our society.
Other articles you may like:
