This is not the most coherent post but a collection of thoughts to help explain why I am interested in how we work.
I am not interested in getting more done. It just happens to be the byproduct of making work suck less. I don’t like being stressed out about work, being hurried, and pestered to get things done, and I hate dumb work (like anything we can get a computer to do). Work does not have to suck and it should not be misery-inducing. Generally, I don’t like doing what others want me to do, I want to work on the things that I am interested in. Though I understand that I have to pay bills so why not try and work in ways that suck less. I figure that others would benefit from this too. I sometimes feel like the solicitor who comes to someone’s door trying to sell something that no one believes will work as well as stated.
Some leaders treat work like it is imperative. I don’t understand why anybody would get mad at work. Honestly, we are all just pretending that everything is more important than it is. I am not sure why we get so bent out of shape to get things done, we do this to ourselves (me included).
I want more humanness in work and I want us to connect more. The workplace has become too sanitized.
I think back to when I was a teenager, I loved spending time around friends. One day my friend had to go and clean his garage, I volunteered to help just so we could spend more time together. We cleaned the garage, listened to good music, and were still able to hang out. I would like to approximate this in my work now.
I am finding that there are certain projects I look forward to working on and there is something satisfying in getting meaningful things accomplished.
When I graduated high school I went to college for a semester and was not ready so I left and worked on an assembly line as an operator for two and a half years. That was not the work I wanted to do for the rest of my life but there are some aspects I look fondly on and I feel a kinship with the hourly workers.
- There was constant joking and finding ways to have fun. One night (I worked the night shift from six pm to about five am) someone brought in a stopwatch to time how fast each of us could make a seat cushion. I was the second fastest.
- We made genuine friends and looked forward to seeing each other.
- Work was left at work.
Work can be better.