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> Personally I find the increasing emphasis on work as a way to derive personal satisfaction troubling. It looks like a subtle trap to me. A way to convince people to forgo time with their family, hobbies, side ventures and anything else you might possibly derive happiness from in favor of just working more and trying to convince yourself that that is enough.

A counterpoint to this is that many people -- myself included -- see that we spend so much of our waking hours at a job (about 40% assuming a 40-hour week) that we want to spend that 40% doing something that makes us happy.

So it's not that work defines us or drives our satisfaction, but that work makes up a large part of our lifespan, and it seems wasteful to spend it doing something just to facilitate the happiness of the other 60%.

I don't want to strive to be happy just 60% of the time -- I want to strive to be happy 100% of the time.

2 comments

I completely understand the sentiment - 40% seems like a lot to be "burning" for the sake of the other 60.

But it's helped me to think about this in a different context: think about the time you spend with your spouse. How much of that time is taken up with "life's necessities" like doing laundry, dishes, prepping meals, cleaning, more cleaning, driving places, even arguing and getting hurt are all part of relationships... And all that stuff takes time and it's not a nice meal out or a walk on the beach or an impromptu dance session. There's a lot of the mundane in our most treasured relationships, and the only people who have a problem with that are teenagers.

Should work/life really be any different?

Those "life necessities" in a relationship are not so bad because the goal, i.e. the relationship is (usually) very important to us. The same goes for a job. If you are working on something that has a great value to you, even the boring tasks are usually not so bad. However if you are in a job where the final goal is of no interest to you things change. If tasks are boring and mundane, you will burn out quickly. In effect I believe that anything we do has to have at least something that is important to us, whether it is the journey or the goal it self, otherwise it would be very difficult to keep being satisfied with what we do.

Typical people need to sleep for 25%-30% of each day, it is hardwired into our biology. I think that "strive to be happy 100% of the time" can be turned into an excellent excuse to sleep deprive yourself, in order to avoid making hard decisions about what to prioritize in your life.

You can apply the same logic to your job. Everybody needs to earn their keep. That's a fact of life. People that already want an excuse to forgo their live for the sake of work will take it as confirmation of what they want to hear.

Not to say that what you say is wrong, just to point how it can be use it to rationalize if taking literally and/or out of context.