Work till we drop

Work till we drop.

We could do that, in fact, many will do that all their lives and retire exhausted.

Working hard has this almost macho attachment to it, like you’re a real woman or man if you work hard, your tough, what a hero, working all hours, constantly busy…you get the picture.

Perhaps, instead of working until we drop, let’s drop work.

Madness, perhaps.

But what is work for? Do we ever question that?

Why do you work?

Is there a way of rethinking the whole programme?

Perhaps a reboot. A new operating system.

Maybe life could be the priority and we work as little as needed to have enough to do things that matter, not work to consume stuff that does not matter.

I think that if we paused for a few moments and looked deeply at what we do on a daily basis, in exchange for money, we might consider is this enriching my life? Is what I use my income for enriching my life? Could I rearrange my priorities in life and work less or differently?

After all, I can’t believe there will be a single one of us who will get to the end of our lives and wish we had worked harder and longer.

School and work, two institutions of the modern world that no one ever really questions what they are for.

Just maybe we could and just maybe we would want to do something different.

What does your best work look like?

‘Eruption’ by Philip Dodson

I attended a great workshop a few years back, facilitated by Judy Rees, and one of the exercises was if you had to visually illustrate what your best work looked like, what would you create? What would you draw?

what would you draw, paint, make or write to demonstrate you at your best?

Do we even stop to look at what factors combine to create our best work, when we are in complete flow, when we are ‘on fire’?

The more we work in a focused, deeper way, the less the shallow distractions occur and the better we can work.

The challenge for us all is that is personal. What creates the environment for deep work for me will be different to you.

However, we all have an environment and mindset that will come together to enable us to do deep focused and meaningful work.

Take a moment to work out where that is for you and then see how you can apply it.