The value of work

What is work? Why do we do it? What does it do for us? What should it do for us?

Work is defined as: activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something. Some people work with their hands doing physical labor. Others do very non-physical work. Whether it's physical or not, the exertion of energy is the key foundation of work.

Have you ever heard someone say, "If it were fun, they wouldn't call it work"? It is a question that makes us wonder, is enjoying your work a right? Even though work requires exertion, do we deserve to like have fun while we are exerting? Should work make us happy or make us tired? Or both?

A lot of people get into careers to directly help other people such as doctors, nurses, therapists, teachers, firefighters, and social workers (to name a few). Working in these professions (and others like them) provides some satisfaction and enjoyment from making an impact in people's lives. Other professionals get satisfaction from other components of work (sales, productivity, business development, career advancement, or just plain old money). Most people do the work they do for more than one of those reasons, but prioritize things differently. Some people could care less what they do, as long as they make a lot of money or have a comfortable life. Others care nothing about money and just passionately work to make an impact in others lives. And most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes.

I've sometimes joked with friends about trying to find a way to simplify life that would allow us to not have to work or be able to live more and work less, but that joke usually ends up with the realization that unless Kate and I want to live in a friend/family/commune, I've got to keep doing what I'm doing now. I've even read about downshifting, which is a way of life that attempts to simplify, de-materialize, and slow down your life, usually resulting in a decreased need to work as much. This approach seems radical at first, but I think there is definitely something to be said about examining our work-and-spend cycle of living. This type of living/thinking is hard because we live in a world that almost demands that we be concerned about making money, which drives us to work.

I think it's pretty hard to work and not think about money and finances. So, for me it's hard not to think about work as a means to money and let that be my sole motivation. My personal goal is to do a little less worrying about the financial aspect of work and focus more on the people I am helping (patients, co-workers, management) and the life I live beyond my work. 

Workaholic

In my first (non-baseball related) blog posting, let me just say that I have no idea what I'm doing or why I'm doing this. I know blogs are "so 2003", but even though I use Email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and other online communication forms, I just can't cram what I say into 140 characters all the time.

So, what is this all about? Work/Life? Who wants to read online about work, right? I don't know, probably not many people, right. But I looked and a LOT of people blog about work...sometimes too much or in too much detail. I will try to avoid any entries describing anything related to this most recent work-related movie (which looks hilarious, by the way). As I picture it, the common theme of my blog entries will be the relationship between work and life.

I work a lot. I "put in" on average 45-50 hours a week. For someone who is not managing a hedge fund in Manhattan, that's a lot I think. I think about work a lot, even when I am not at work. I've been called a workaholic before by friends and family (jokingly sometimes, seriously other times). I can tell when I'm really "addicted to work" when my response is, "I can stop working this much whenever I want" (only a slight variation of the alcoholic's response, "I can quit drinking whenever I want". Thankfully my family and friends are patient with me and things work out (and no intervention has had to be staged yet).

No, but all joking aside, there is something fascinating about work to me, and to all of us. For some reason, one of the first things we ask people after we are introduced to them is "what do you do?" I do this all the time. In small talk situations I'm sometimes more interested in talking to people about their work than I am about the other areas of their life (family, community, spirituality/religion, hobbies, etc.).

If you look at work from a time/mathematical standpoint, think about how much time you spend at work and how much time you spend not at work. There are 168 hours in each week. If you sleep 8 hours a night (does anyone really get 8 hours?), you can subtract 56 hours, which brings you down to 112 hours. If you work the "standard" 40 hours a week, that really only leaves you with 72 hours left to "play" with. If you work 50 hours a week, you're spending just under half your waking hours at work. A lot of people continue to be "connected" to work (through email, phone, text messages, and other ways even when they are not "at work". This trend leads to the blurring between work and personal/home time. I don't thing this trend is going away either, as there are only more and more ways to stay connected and tied to work.

Bottom line, I and I think most of us spend a lot of time at work, thinking about work, and connected to work. So, there has got to be something to this whole work/life thing. That's why I want to talk start talking about it. Let me know what you think about all this.