Don't Like Work? Why? - DBR 062

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

I want to explore what we mean when we say we don't like to work, or we don't like our work, or we don't like a task. A buddy of mine, Justin Janowski, captured this recently saying about a task, “It didn’t feel like work, it felt like hanging out with friends and having discussions.” Punchline: I think he was referring to recording marketing videos in an all day session - something many people would dread. Why can't we take this view more often? I firmly believe that the evidence shows that our feelings about something have a huge impact on our experience with it. What I mean is, if we expect something to make us unhappy, it's very likely that it will. Made to work

• The material stuff of our universe is there for us to do things with, we can bring forth that which is not readily apparent
• We're drawn to work. We like making places for ourselves, and we like occupying our attention with things.
• Many of the things we desire to have or be require work
• There are some things that we do at the request of other people, in exchange for money

Four categories of “work”

• First category: you're going to your office or your business or your job, and you're doing the work
• Another category that's often called work is chore. The goal is problem avoidance, maintenance.
• The third category is Hobby. The goal is to “keep playing/producing”, although it can be ‘hard’ work
• The fourth category – entertainment and amusement - pleasantly engaged with light positive emotion.

Feelings about the four

• There are a full range of emotions across the four categories - positive and negative
• Dislike is a value judgement, not an emotion, although it can be spurred by negative emotion
• Chore vs. hobby - who has control of the standard of quality
• Chore and Economic work - both have an external (uncontrolled) standard
• Hobby - can be physically, emotionally, and mentally hard, but we don't dislike doing it
• Entertainment/amusement - the standard is very low.

Dislike?

• Not owning the standard may correspond to dislike
• Mindset is the key to owning the standard
• Culture is the primary force that tells us work is "bad" - can we not adopt that trope
• Our minds give us what we expect

Takeaways

• Own the standard and move chore and economic work toward hobby
• Refute the cultural meme about people who enjoy their (economic) work
• Entertainment/amusement is addictive in our culture; so is hobby (but hobby produces results)

I think both economic work and chore can be elevated out of the dislike category. Own the standard and raise your skill so that your standard exceeds the external one. Entertainment/amusement is probably dangerous and should be strictly self-controlled. [e-mail]; linkedin.com/in/larrytribble