You Should Want More Out of Life Than A Desk

Quit Settling For Less

This article is about seven odd minutes long but you can probably get the gist of it in less than a minute.

‘How?’, I hear you ask.

Well dear reader, by doing this very simple thought exercise…

How many genuinely happy people do you know who are corporate ladder climbers?

Alternatively (if money is more important to you), think about the number of millionaires you know who have got rich off of a 9–5 job?

Any?

I only ever met one person who fit the second description. He is seventy years old, retired and white. He’s a pleasant enough guy but I don’t think he is a particularly happy chap though.

But hey, if you want to be a not-particularly-happy millionaire by age seventy and are a white male then you have a good shot if you keep trudging away at that desk job.

If not, then it’s a good time to time to re-evaluate your life choices.

The Awakening

A wise man once said, “Only a fool does not change his mind”. Better to change your mind while you still have one to change, I say.

There’s no shame in changing your mind. I ran that hamster wheel for thirteen years myself. I was socialised to aspire to a corner office in a high-rise office building. So surprise, surprise, that was what I did.

The moment of change for me came without any huge aha moment of epiphany. I simple woke up one day and decided to wake up and stop deluding myself.

I stopped lying to myself that next year’s 2% salary increase would actually keep pace with inflation much less bring me the freedom or happiness that I wanted — and deserved to have.

The great news though is that it doesn’t have to that you that long. And if it already has, well it doesn’t have to go on any longer.

When you know better, you do better — Maya Angelou

The World of Work

Everything about the way modern society is set up pushes the acceptance of mediocrity.

Most of us spend our days sitting in a cubicle, doing work that we find stressful on the best day and soul-destroying on the worst.

This is no coincidence – it’s by design.

Today’s corporate set up would be better described as a graveyard for dreams.

It’s where all your youthful ambitions and verve go to be embalmed and buried — only without the ceremony.

Let’s delve into it for a minute.

Ever notice how when you are hired you are considered to be of high potential. It makes you feel good right? You’ve been handpicked because you’ve got that magic juice called potential. It’s as if you can make it all the way to the top.

Well, not so fast Skippy. You’re going to have to earn that corner-office prison.

You spend the next few years working your tail off. While HR and your line work on coming up with new ways to show how not-quite-ready you are for that next promotion.

This is because corporations do their best to suppress demands for increases in worker pay. It’s better for the bottom-line you see — to lower overheads. It’s a better look for the executive and more profitable shareholders if you have less in your pocket as an employee.

They succeed in this by getting you to believe that no-one is indispensable.

Hell, if you believe that you aren’t special then you sure aren’t going to be advocating for what you’re worth.

Sound familiar?

You of course take the bait and slave away even harder than before to prove that you are in fact special. You are after that illusory carrot dangling just off centre of your nose. So you give your most productive years away for a pittance hoping to one day get a crunch at success. Only to find out that day never quite arrives.

You might change jobs hoping that jumping ship somehow helps you short-circuit the system. Sometimes it works — new job, new faces, a promotion (maybe), same mess. It isn’t long before you find yourself up against the same old frustrations.

Having Some One Be The Boss Of You

There is a major dearth of leadership in most spheres of society and it is no more pronounced than within corporate structures.

Let’s elevate the conversation beyond the particular hell of having a micromanaging, insecure or low EQ supervisor. It is a proven concept that people do not leave companies so much as terrible bosses.

So let’s assume you that had the world’s most amazing manager. Perfect in every way possible.

What then is that niggling feeling you get about someone telling you what to do? Someone checking your work? Having to report back to someone when you need to take a break or when you are ill?

You know what I mean. There’s is a certain discomfort we all feel at having to take orders from someone else. It’s like the mildest form of indignity from far off left field.

Working Like A Dog

You know they’ve got you good when you are checking emails during your vacation. Even worse when you have pangs of guilt over taking time off work.

What is that?

It’s you turning into a corporate mutt.

Losing the ability to function as a free-thinking, autonomous being. The transformation is complete once you become your own jail master.

You may object and say that you just really love what you do. That’s great. How does loving your job translate into compromising your health?

You need to take breaks from work for obvious reasons and if you are at the point where you feel like you can’t — well, then you better be the owner or CEO of that company.

Feeling Under-Valued & Underpaid

In my second job after my master’s program, I felt quite under-valued. I knew that I had a lot more to offer. So I decided to write an email to my business department head requesting more responsibility.

Ever the consummate leader, he decided to share my emails (verbatim) with his department heads. I found out after I got told by more than two managers on separate occasions to rein in my enthusiasm.

Companies might claim to be looking for mavericks but in reality, they are more interested in corporate serfs. They need you to conform and stay within your set box. People who colour out of the lines are rarely embraced.

In the same way, your value is pre-defined by a company-wide salary structure that you may never know the insides of. Most employees would revolt if they knew how random and discriminatory the rules are.

The Turnaround

You feel it deep down in your bones. You are worth more than the crumbs thrown at you as a cubicled serf. You know that there’s more to you than a rat running a predestined race off a cliff.

It is a valid desire to want to feel, do and be more than a corporate serf.

There are a number of steps you can take in the short-term to get closer to the life you want.

However, it is important to caveat the idea of ‘replicable success’ that most self-help authors offer. It’s a fallacy to expect that what worked for me would work in the same exact way for you.

It won’t.

There is simply too much randomness at play in the world for this to ever be the case.

However, here are a few suggestions to get you started on your own journey…

• Do Less — I know this is contradictory. But it works. Doing less work will allow you a rare peek around the curtain of the machine. You’ll be able to see the truth of how indispensable you are or not. In either case, the knowledge would be empowering. More importantly though, doing less will create the space you need to begin to design an alternate existence.
• Do More — More contradictions! This is where you want to do more of what you hope will be the building blocks for your new life. Read, experiment, decide and act in service of yourself.
• See Through The Contradictions — It took me a while to notice that conventional wisdom is mostly replete with half-truths. The full picture lies in studying the opposite of what common paths have to teach. This is also often where you will find compelling truths.

The choice is an has always been yours. Will you continue to pull that cart up the hill to get a bite out of a carrot tied to your nose? Or is it time to take the harness and stirrups off?

Your choice dear reader.