Relaxed, clean, a cup of coffee and a blank page?
Fuh-gedda-bout it.
I am a little upset. My life isn’t neat and orderly. Stuff is happening and I’m not as caught up as I’d like to be. Sound familiar? You too? Huh.
Well, let me go you one better. My work life is that way too. What do you think of that?
You think I should take down my Life Coach sign and go home, don’t you? Or maybe you’re like many of my clients and you’re a bit relieved to learn that I’ll be spending an hour or four on Sunday getting my inbox in order.
The nature of work is to be messy. Hey, after all, we’re working in here, we’re having a life. Each of us is trying to grow, to master the next thing required of us and to find a way to balance this against all the other demands on our time.
Work is not static and it never will be.
As soon as we wrangle all the demands into an orderly state, as soon as we master what’s in front of us, something changes. A competitor comes up with a better product and we have to catch up. Our co-worker retires and we have to learn their tasks. A new opportunity presents itself and we have to learn to fit it into the puzzle of time and tasks. All of this happens and more. It never ends.
Regardless of where we are on the learning curve, the curve keeps sloping off into the distance.
Are you disappointed?
I used to be so change resistant that I let my living room sofa make me unhappy for a month. I spent hours and hours shopping for it. It was perfect until it arrived. Then it was all wrong – because it wasn’t the couch that used be there.
Now, I’m older. I know I’ve got at least three more couches coming my way before I kick the bucket. I don’t need my couch to be perfect to be happy. It’s not the centerpiece of my life.
What if you let work, be work? You know, kinda how when the cat leaves dead mice on the doormat, you have to acknowledge that Mr. Fuzzy is a predator and not a really short person?
What if you looked at work and noticed that it always comes with challenges? What if you looked at work and noticed that interruptions arise daily? That if you turn off your phone and log out of instant messager, people will show up at your door? That your work consists of both projects and changes to the projects?
If you wish work would be orderly so that you can relax, then you’re wishing for the wrong thing. If you require your situation, or your sofa, to conform to your expectations in order for you to be content, then change is going to be a problem.
When you and your work are separate, you get to be you.
Work gets to be work.
Work can stay messy. And you? You can put your feet up and be content.
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