I’m a cofounder and the Head of Innovation at Fringe. We are an HR Technology startup focused on transforming the work experience.
There’s always truth in humor. “Everybody’s working for the weekend” and “It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere” have become cultural maxims highlighting our adversarial relationship with work. I’ll admit, there’s something compelling about the simplicity of a binary explanation: Work is bad, and life is good. There is something that feels right about work being a less-than-satisfying part of my endeavor through life. I’ve done mundane work and survived toxic workplaces. But the logical fallacy is making the leap that work is, therefore, inherently bad.
The way we work today has never been more radically different. Where we once worked in agrarian societies with intimate knowledge of the land and communities our work benefited from, we now work in digital spaces with a greater disconnect between the work itself and the humans it impacts. While you can point to the benefits of the progress we’ve made, it’s no secret that some of the changes have left us fumbling to find true purpose and deep meaning in our day-to-day lives. This dissonance has led us to believe lies that are damaging our ability to create a more holistic and fulfilling life and experience of work.
Lie No. 1: Work is bad, and life is good.
Work is hard. Too much work can make us sick and lead to poor mental health. We have to unwind from work because it drains us. So, we conclude work must be largely negative.
It’s easy to believe that work is stealing the good from the rest of our lives after experiences of feeling unfulfilled and unappreciated. After all, isn’t the dream to work hard, save for the future and sail off into the sunset of a beautiful retirement filled with all the things you love most? In this view, work is reduced to nothing more than a transaction that must be completed as quickly and painlessly as possible in order to get back to life. It’s an exchange of wages for time. But over the course of human history, work was not simply utilitarian. In many cultures, work was seen as a way of expressing one’s creativity and contributing to the community. The activities of work were often communal and brought people together, strengthening social bonds.
Work is an inescapable fact of human existence. I’d like to suggest that the aim of a good life is human flourishing. And, if that is our aim, work can and must be a cornerstone of that vision.
Lie No. 2: Balance is an attainable goal.
In previous generations, the lines between work and home were often more distinct. As a child, my dad was in the Marine Corps. When he was on duty or in the field, he was unreachable. When he was home, he was present with us. Later, he worked rotating shifts for the regional power company, and while he was occasionally on call, the line between work and home was clear.
We’ve been set up to believe that the epitome of personal performance is achieving the elusive standard of work-life balance. But it’s a false paradigm. These days, life is streaming at you while you work, and work is streaming at you while you’re home doing life. I currently work at home a few days a week and “offsite” the others. As I’m writing this in the middle of an “offsite” day, my wife is calling me about our dog and giving me updates on our youngest child, who has had an ear infection. There isn’t a line between work and life—there’s just life.
Rather than idolizing the impossible ideal of work-life balance, we should set our sights on a better objective: work-life integration. Instead of trying to carve up and compartmentalize our days in a doomed effort to keep all the things in their place, we’d be better served to find ways that those things can complement one another.
Lie No. 3: Work has nothing to do with finding fulfillment.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced flow theory in the 1970s. He studied people who did things for pleasure, even when they were not rewarded with money or fame and found that enjoyment came not from relaxation or the absence of stress but rather from having our attention fully absorbed by an intense activity. You may have experienced this with sports, music or other activities that “fully engage.” Even the most mundane activities can become imbued with purpose and meaning when we approach them with the right mindset.
The coddling of our minds has led us to believe that the path of least resistance is the better path: When we come up against hard things, it’s a signal something is wrong. When we experience challenges or hardship, the right response is to seek solace from the challenge.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, which has become one of the most prevalent and effective forms of personal therapy, often involves deliberate and voluntary exposure to fears and challenges in an effort to develop the resilience to overcome them. The sense of purpose we experience day-to-day is inextricably linked to the responsibility and challenge we take on, which is, of course, deeply connected to the work we do. By reflecting deeply on personal responsibility and doing our best to orient our efforts in work toward the values we hold in the highest esteem, our work can become an area of deep fulfillment and purpose in our lives.
If we reject these three lies, I believe we will find a more holistic and integrated relationship with work. When we aim for human flourishing, work can become filled with purpose. When we reject the balance for integration, we are being honest about our lives and holding together the demands we experience. And lastly, by seeking out work that challenges us and aligns with our deepest values, we can find great fulfillment.
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