Why do people work

At the sunset of your career, what do you envision the purpose of all that sunk time working to have been? Jenni and I were on our evening stroll around our neighborhood earlier. Fall is on the horizon, we were a little more bundled up than normal. I asked why, curious as to what was driving her. She said:. I was worried about how easy it is to slide back into work.

They might even have some secretive intravenous method to pump you full of just the right mixture of dopamine and endorphins. The worst form of golden velveteen handcuffs is those in disguise. They come with the promise of ease and luxury. Punch the numbers, input the clock. Punch clock. Input numbers. Business is trying to answer the question in its own way.

While organizations struggle to answer, their end goal remains the same: to make more money. We rested from our stroll at the peak of an art garden on a bench, the sun sharp on the horizon in the early evening.

She just finished a post on her big patio project and conquering DIY fears! Of course, what she meant was bigger adventures: foreign slow travel, local volunteerism, long visits with friends and family around the country. Did you think of monetary wins: a bonus, a promotion? Undoubtedly your experience that you remember best, surmounting the challenge ahead of you, required some genuine outside the box thinking. The commonality among those meaningful parts of work is in the novelty of the task at hand combined with the new methods you employ to combat the challenges.

The purpose of your work is not to repeat the rote procedure. Even as the routine might be necessary at first, the goal and satisfaction come from removing routine through creative work. Do you believe a great artist would find satisfaction and purpose by churning out small variations of an existing artwork of theirs? His next project was the Sistine Chapel ceiling, an entirely new sort of challenge to his creativity.

The difference between creativity and rote production is having an end goal in which novelty is created. Newness and creative vision that supports it is what makes the difference between the unsatisfying work of a factory production line and the subtle experimentation, feedback, and improvement loop of an artist seeking perfection.

Roger Ebert wrote:. Standing behind his counter, Jiro notices things. As the master of sushi, Jiro has spent decades producing the same final product: a piece of food, ephemeral in its short existence. Each customer has a different experience from another: right-handed folks are seated differently from lefties.

As Jenni and I plodded down the steps of the art garden with the cool evening air seeping in to replace the setting sun, we spoke more on the newly freed time she and I both have with our pursuit of retiring early. The creative possibilities that open up to a life of work on your own terms can paradoxically be paralyzing.

Personally, I have no desire to cease my own ever-evolving form of work even as money ceases to become a driver of that work.

The purpose of earning money is to have enough money , no more, no less. When I was working full-time, I needed to be at the top of my game in my area of expertise. That meant I needed to go deep but on a narrow set of knowledge topics. These days, as the pressure is gone to keep up with peer competition, I get a much more varied set of problems to deal with.

I ruthlessly cut anything that looked or felt like routine, mindless work. A means to an end, which had arrived. When our ancestors were first figuring out how to make fire and collect water, and rocks were the trendy disruption product everyone was talking about this was pre-kale , people found that their skills for utilising rocks were unique.

When they realised they could trade their services, the idea of work was born. Can you imagine having to write a detailed marketing plan every time you needed a plumber?

So, naturally, this has driven a lot of people towards work for money reasons. Having more money means having more options. But, as society developed, so did the notion of work and what it means to us, both individually and collectively. To more advanced societies, work has come to shape our identities, social class, peer groups, hobbies, intellectual pursuits and plans for retirement. They include as much experience in the resume as possible to be considered for employment. Studies conducted in organizations reveal that people hold their jobs because of the opportunities they have to exercise their skills and to learn new things.

Why do people work if not for things that contribute to their job satisfaction? Job satisfaction is one of the factors that people evaluate in their pursuit of better jobs or their decision to maintain previous employment. Many people who work in place for a long time will testify that their jobs bring significant satisfaction. People have several reasons that bring about their happiness, which make them go on with their work grind. Similarly, people who are not happy in their workplaces are prone to leave in search of opportunities that would contribute to their satisfaction.

That shows, through people are not satisfied with their current jobs they desire to move further and find better job opportunities that would fulfill their goals and make them happy. It is apparent people would pursue jobs that earn them respect in the society.

This element of honor could be found in the workplace or outside the working environment. Psychological studies on the aspect of respect at the workplace show how people would do anything to earn the honor. Some employees are creative and eager to try out new things, technologies, and challenge their employees. Having a culture that encourages to experiment and pushes the talents paves the way for personal respect from the other people.

Employees whose ideas are rejected without due consideration will not have an opportunity to get respect from other employees or even the society. As a result, disengage immediately and find reasons not to go to work. Work is the initial part of our lives, which help us to achieve our dreams and become better us.

Our motivation determines the ability to wake up each morning to go to work.