Getting to Work CategoriesTo Your Health & Sanity

Getting to Work

I was surprised some years ago when a retired state employee approvingly offered up his father’s definition of work as…”time measured by the personal satisfaction lost.” So, if you really don’t like what you’re doing at all, that’s work!

I didn’t much like that one;

                I haven’t forgotten it; and

                                I hope not many of you would define your own work in that way.

But it does make you think about your own views and attitudes toward work, along with some others that you may have heard.

I like the response from a 101-year-old gentleman in Michigan who was being celebrated in his local newspaper as the oldest known American worker currently drawing a regular paycheck. As I recall, he was employed in an auto parts store. When asked how and why he had managed to hold a job for so long, he said:

“Well, I think when you get good at something you find that you like it.”

Most of us have heard just the opposite: that good work is the result of finding someone to pay you for doing what you like to do. Naturally, this assumes that we’re actually good at what we like to do, which isn’t always true.

I also liked another view, expressed to me when I was just starting out by a retired long-time plant worker. He said that a truly fortunate person would change jobs every five years or so. He explained that it normally takes about that long to learn the job, settle into it, and become fully competent. By then, he said, you’re ready to do it again. That’s if you’re really lucky.

I mention these three views to you because they’ve all affected my own outlook toward work much more than the simple scientific definition of work as merely moving something.

What is your feeling about “work”?