There’s a quote, (mis)attributed to Aristotle, that begins “we are what we repeatedly do…” I’ve always like the quote for its resolution – “excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Lately the first bit, and what it captures about our odd relationship with work, has been on my mind (for probably self-evident reasons).
Most of us spend most of our time “at work” – it’s literally what we repeatedly do – and for many of us it becomes a defining aspect of self.
“I’m a carpenter.”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“I’m a nurse.”
“I’m a software engineer.”
It’s right there, hidden in the contraction. We’re not saying I do, we’re saying I am.
And yet, at the same time, most of us look forward to the day we can choose to stop.
Maybe you’re not “most of us.” Maybe you’re someone who – like a former colleague of mine – “would do this [job] for free.” If that’s you, I’m not sure this will make much sense. Sorry.
The question that’s been rattling around in my head lately is “If we are what we do, and mostly what we do is work, what are we when we’re not working – when we aren’t doing?”
I grew up in a “vanishing middle class” family. Both my parents spent their working years working “for someone else” and nearly all of my friend’s parents did, too. So it’s probably my plebeian background talking, but being able to opt out of someone else having claim to most of my time – while continuing to maintain a comfortable lifestyle – feels like an incredible luxury.
At the same time, prioritization was a recurring theme in my up-bringing. It wasn’t always explicitly talked about as prioritization, but in retrospect prioritization was the kernel of many of the lessons my parents worked to impart. Time was a scarce and finite resource, so you did what needed doing first, and once that was done you did what you wanted with whatever time was left.
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. That sort of thing.
I internalized that lesson really well. Maybe too well. I remember times as a kid, being burned out working on some “needs doing” thing – like homework – and not letting myself take a break. Even though a short break would would likely let me get done faster and better. Because this thing needed doing, and “needs doing” things come first.
Somewhere along the way – probably in college, when all the things that needed doing would overflow the available time – I got more intentional about prioritization. I stopped just thinking about something “needing doing” and started thinking about what would be “the best, most valuable, use” of my limited time.
What was “valuable” was a bit … subjective. Learning was valuable, so reading – even fiction – qualified. So did spending time with friends, almost irrespective of what we did with that time, as long as it was interactive. Watching TV was not valuable (unless it was what Dawnise and I have come to call “edutainment” on PBS). Ditto video games, which basically never qualified. On the other hand, “needs doing” things were valuable unless proven otherwise.
Where did that leave “work?” It turned out that many of the things I wanted to do required money. And since I didn’t have the foresight and fortune to be born into a wealthy family, work was how one got money.
One of the interview questions I used to ask software folks just starting out in the industry was “where does your paycheck come from?” It’s not a trick question – the goal was to see if they could turn their mental crank enough to get to some version of “the work I do is valuable to someone, that someone trades money for that value, and my paycheck is some of that money.”
So work, by definition, is (must be) valuable. Or, put another way, if the work you’re doing isn’t valuable to someone, you probably won’t be doing it gainfully for long. The Faustian bit is that to get money, you trade time – and the more time you trade for money, the less you have left to do the things the money lets you do.
All of that comes back around to me, having stepped away from full time work “for a while,” not having a particularly satisfying answer to the question “what do you do?”
I’ve tried “I’m on a sabbatical,” “I’m taking a career break,” and even “I’m test-driving retirement.” They’re all basically true, and they all trigger the same follow-up: “what did you do?” which often quickly segues into “how do you fill your time now?”
It’s not unreasonable to ask. To try to find some sort of handle on “me.”
What’s surprising, and doesn’t feel entirely reasonable, is my emotional response.
The question makes me angsty.
Because, at least right now, all the answers I have fly in the face of a deep seated long standing belief that I should be doing “something valuable.”
It turns out I’m basically still that kid. Still struggling to take a break from my homework, despite knowing a break is sensible.
I’m really not sure how I fix this. It’s been “me” for as long as I remember. That doesn’t mean it’s right, but it does mean it’s hard to change.
Perhaps the nagging voice in my head is right – perhaps I do need to “find something valuable to do.” Either by deciding that something I want to do is valuable, or by finding something that’s valuable and deciding I want to do it.
Or perhaps I need to ignore this feeling for a bit and see if it goes away…