“We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.” ― Thomas A. Edison
The average person will spend 20% of their lives at work. This statistic factors in 21 years of preparing for work and 13 years afterwards (retirement). During our actual years of working (ages 21-67), this percentage goes up to 25-30% based on a typical 40-45 hour/week. Subtracting sleep, on average, we spend 33% of our waking hours working.
We spend a significant amount of our life working. It is a large piece of our life. And it is important to think thoughtfully and intentionally about it.
I have known countless people who are happy with their work. They find meaning, significance, and joy in it. Additionally, I have met many people who are unhappy with their work and choose to spend an additional percentage of their life complaining about it.
Interestingly enough, these differences in attitudes have little to do with the actual work being done—in fact, two people in the same field can have completely different responses to the same job.
This is helpful because it means enjoying work has less to do with your actual job and more to do with your attitude towards it. Changing our attitude towards work is often far easier than changing jobs. It also means that, with only a few exceptions, you can be happy in your work today. You can find joy and fulfillment in it.
And sometimes, this can come with a simple change in thinking.
A 7-Step Path to Enjoying Work
1. Realize you were designed to work.
Whether by creation or evolution, humans are designed to work. This is an important part of our nature. It explains our drive to grow as individuals and as a society. It explains the internal satisfaction we experience when completing a task. It makes sense of the positive emotions we experience when resting after a hard day of work. And it may help us understand why some studies indicate early retirement has an adverse impact on physical and mental health.
The realization that we are designed to work is an important first step in finding fulfillment in it–even though “work” looks different for each of us. If we are designed to accomplish work, it is not something to be avoided. Instead, it is something to be sought, welcomed, and enjoyed.
2. Understand work takes place in an imperfect world.
Our world is imperfect because we exist in a universe full of people who often fall short. Though we each have an ingrained desire to accomplish good for the sake of others, in reality, we often function with selfish desires and intentions. These imperfections always lead to less-than-ideal working conditions. As a result, work includes overbearing bosses, deadlines, stress, under-resourced projects, tasks we do not enjoy, and often, anxiety.
The realization that these imperfections are always going to be present in our workplace allows us to accept them and move forward. Now just to be clear, this present reality does not mean we don’t fight for equality and justice when appropriate. But it does mean we can stop looking for joy in the perfect work environment because it doesn’t exist. And it opens the door to finding joy in our existing one.
3. Use work to supply provisions for yourself and your family.
In its simplest definition, work is a bartering tool. We work our jobs in exchange for money. This money is then given to another in exchange for growing food, producing clothing, building shelter, or discovering new medicine to keep us healthy. Because of work, we are freed to spend our days doing what we love and are good at. In exchange, we receive goods (money) to trade with someone else who used their giftedness to create something different than us.
This is the goal of work. This is also the prescribed means of providing for those who are dependent upon us. Looking for shortcuts (lottery, dishonest gain, unnecessary dependence on others) to supply provisions is often a foolish direction for life.
4. Notice how your work contributes to the common good.
If the goal of our work is to contribute good to society in exchange for provision, then our work ought to benefit society. We should spend 40-45+ hours/week producing a benefit for others. We should grow healthy food, produce quality clothing, intentionally parent children, create beautiful art, build strong shelter, develop new life-enhancing technology, research medicine to prolong life, educate others, govern society honestly, or any other countless opportunities to contribute to the common good of our neighbor and our society.
This step results in 1 of 2 possible outcomes: First, it forces us to view work differently. It allows us to wake up on Monday morning with a positive attitude and opens up the door to finding new joy in our role. We are not solely working for the Net Income box on our paycheck… we are working to benefit society. Or second, this truth forces us to find new work. If, for whatever reason, we do not believe our job is contributing good to society, we must find a new one. No dollar amount can ever equal the satisfaction and joy experienced in contributing good to the world around us—for this is the purpose of work.
5. Work ethically.
Work done ethically and honestly with proper balance will always result in more enjoyment than the alternative. These same principles of life hold true to every aspect—including the 20% we spent working.
6. Humbly and proudly accept honest compensation.
We each have skills and talents this world needs. There are other people willing to compensate us in exchange for them. Therefore, we ought to work hard at proudly developing our craft and humbly learning as much as we can from others who have gone before. It is also wise to discipline ourselves around the improvement of these skills and talents. The greater we develop them, the greater worth we are to others. And the greater worth we are to others, the more honest compensation we should receive for providing them.
7. Remove the pursuit of riches.
While honest compensation should always be sought with both humility and pride, the pursuit of riches and wealth as an end goal is always a losing battle. Riches will never fully satisfy… we will always be left searching for more. People who view their work as only a means to get rich often fall into temptation, harmful behavior, and foolish desires.
The intentional understanding of steps 6 and 7 provide great freedom for us to enjoy work on a whole new level. When we replace the desire to get rich with a more life-fulfilling desire to receive honest compensation, we open our hearts to find peace in our paychecks and greater value in our work.
Indeed, may each of us find greater value and fulfillment in our work. And in so doing, may we increase joy in this important (and essential) aspect of our lives.
Image: Vince Alongi
danielle says
Im fairly new to the minimalist movement. I got into it because i realized the things that i owned were starting to own me, i found myself unhappy and joyless because i had to work extra hard to maintain those things that owned me. It wasnt till i was laid off my job that i started to really get into this minimalist additude. I realized that i didnt need an excess of things to keep up with the jones or to be subjected to materialism. I found out i could easily take a job and make less money and live within my means. So thats what i did. I agree with the fact that humans are mean to work but what i dont agree with is staying at a job you dont like just because you make a great salary. Im more happier now than i ever was now that i took my power back and got out of a materialistic mentality and now living with in my means at a job that makes me happier. I would say if you dont like your job dont make rash decisions like quitting instead find something that makes you happy and work towards to getting to that it will come in time.
Felicia says
Thank you! I needed this tonight. I agree with and enjoy reading all of your posts.
Heather says
5. Work ethically.
Work done ethically and honestly with proper balance will always result in more enjoyment than the alternative. These same principles of life hold true to every aspect—including the 20% we spent working.
And this is why I am changing jobs. It’s a start up and already, the ethics are lacking. I try to just be happy and go to work but I ethically cannot continue in this field. I will be moving on soon.
debbie says
As an elementary Montessori teacher this is how I approached teaching the children in my class about work. I agree with all that you have written. I know longer teach elementary aged children, now I work with toddlers in a Montessori setting. As an assistant in Early Childhood Education my work fits everything you write about except I have to quit to find a better paying job. Reality is that the work that fits my strengths is all work that is not valued by society, meaning society doesn’t feel the that that profession should be paid a living wage. I am 46 years old and am going to go into debt to go to nursing school so that I can use my skill set to still work at a job that contributes to society. But it will hopefully be a job where I am paid a living wage. My fear is that nursing isn’t going to give me the same satisfaction as working with children, but I have to make the change in order to be financially stable.
craig says
Work is an ideological symbol that only seems natural in a capitalist system. We are forced to sell our labor in order to have basic human needs met. This is an absolutely irrational system and certainly not minimalist. We need to actually change the system rather than try and ‘make work better’.
Fifi Bee says
There seems to be an assumption here that we all agree what the term ‘work’ refers to. I like what @Kristen Cochran describes: work=paid job and Work=the jobs we do to take care of ourselves and others: the unpaid Work related to keeping a home, raising a family, caring for loved ones. Both forms require a positive attitude and sense of purpose and the 7 STep path can apply to both forms. I struggle with the fact that monetary work is valued above unpaid Work. Taking care of our well-being in this society is a job in itself! Cleaning our homes, caring for our health, providing food etc. – Western society does not value this as Work! Its only since I have started the process of minimising my life – leaving a highly demanding stressful paid work of regular 60+hr weeks – that I now recognise and respect the other jobs i do onto of a paid job. I now try to balance my paid work with my unpaid Work and value both equally, creating more joy and harmony in my life :)
carole293 says
Good thoughts. I am lucky enough to love my job. I found something that I enjoy and it’s really nice that they pay me to do it.
Mike says
pursuing*
Mike says
“Remove the pursuit of riches”
The irony here is that if you’re not perusing your own riches, you are working for a company that is. Why work so hard so that someone else enjoys the fruit of your labor? Work for yourself.
Leila says
I don’t know. I was really feeling down about this today. While I agree with some of the points in theory, in reality the happiest times of my life have always been the times when I was not working for income (the six months in 2012 when I got laid off and got to enjoy summer in Vermont with my two-year-old [now three] daughter, with no time constraints, were some of the happiest of my adult life). Not that I don’t work at all, I always have multiple projects going on that are productive and that I love (organic gardening, firewood processing, jewelry making, writing, photography, traveling, outdoor recreation, cooking/food processing, and many many more), but working for money, under someone else’s terms and schedule, has been really difficult, no matter how I try to reframe it as “service” or practice gratitude or try to be positive about it. Worse than that, because my husband and I took on so much debt for our undergraduate and graduate student loans, we have a lot of financial stress and struggle to make ends meet, even though we both work full time at professional jobs and make good money on paper. I do try to stay positive and count my blessings, but on bad days it feels a lot more like indentured servitude than empowerment.
I worked for ten years in renewable energy, and now, natural resource protection. Both great fields, both doing creative work that provide important services and that align with my values. But this is not what makes me happy. I want to be home with my three-year-old daughter, or out in the woods doing photography, or growing beautiful food in my gardens, or even at my stove, cooking up something awesome from scratch on a snowy winter day. I constantly feel like the things I want to spend my time on are squeezed out by the things I have to do, and it does cause a lot of dissonance, not to mention guilt.
Maybe this is one of those times that I just have to accept that things will not be as I want them to be, but it is difficult to find joy in today when every minute that I am at work feels like a minute away from the people and activities that I really want to be spending my time with/on. While I do agree with you that work and service to others is crucial to our happiness, my experience has been that there is a huge divide between the concept of “work” and the reality of “paid employment.”
Thanks for posting (and listening to me ramble, lol), I always look forward to your blog posts.
Jamil Popatia says
Leila, I could not help but respond here because I share those same sentiments with you as a father, husband, religious leader, etc.
Ibn Khladun, the world’s first known sociologist said that the two worst ways to earn a living are playing games of chance and employment. This man lived centuries ago and saw that when people work for others there is an inherent “indentured servitude” aspect to their work.
Working for oneself is liberating and is the path (I believe) to feeling that sense of honor and accomplishment alluded to by Joshua in this article.