After a busy day, everyone else has gone home and you’re still sitting at your desk. You’ve called your partner to let them know something has come in that you really need to finish for your manager by tomorrow morning, and you’ll make it up to them. You get your head down knowing it will be worth it tomorrow.
Next day, you’re in the office earlier than usual to make sure everything’s finished to your own high standards. Your manager breezes in and casually tells you the meeting has been moved, and they don’t need that document done until next week now.
Exasperating. Infuriating. And it gets you asking: “What’s the point?”.
When we’re feeling ignored, disengaged, or disappointed, what is the point of what we are doing? What is the point of going to work at all?
Take a moment to write as many reasons as possible below. What is the point of you going to work?
Lots of people have similar immediate answers to this question:
- To make money;
- To be able to eat / pay the mortgage / live;
- Because I have to.
These are legitimate reasons - in our social structure, we need to generate money to pay for shelter and food, and we place great emphasis in the social responsibility of our work.
But are they enough to keep us in a role?
If you had what you needed to live satisfactorily, and you were released from the social responsibility of working, would you still do the job you currently do?
If your answer is ‘yes’, there’s something in your current role which gives you a greater reason, a purpose , for going to work.
If your answer is ‘no’, you have started to detach yourself from habitual reasoning about why you go to work, which means you can start to form new reasons - and find new purpose .
If you want to find out more about this topic, click here.
