Reimagine Work
“If you don’t have big dreams and goals, you’ll end up working for someone that does” -foundr
When its time to “go to work”, I become the saddest person on earth. Bribe me with a luxury date after a day of expending my strength on my daily mundane routine and I would probably look forward to the end of the day. I would do so mindlessly, yet, consciously moving through and painfully monitoring the hours -impatiently waiting for it all to pass. I found out that living out my life with most of it dedicated to my career, my means of livelihood, has not been the most exciting thing!
The question then is, if my life is not exciting because of my career choice, what is? What percentage of my life is dedicated to work? These are questions you might want to ask in order for you to decide on exactly what kind of ‘work’ you want to fulfill your life course satisfactorily.
For the sake of this article, the definition of work will be limited to paid employment.
It is the easiest thing, to get tired and maybe even give up when it comes to work. Human beings are not machines! They are mostly an expressive, inquisitive, variety loving or ambivalent species. When put to repeat a certain task, it may look like the most convenient thing seeing as “practice makes perfect”. However, it could be the most exhausting and maybe even depressing ordeal. Pain, regret and even resentment for work often results when people work jobs that they do not enjoy. Jobs become our worst nightmare when they are perfunctory activities we must undertake to make a living.
‘One third of your life is spent at work’
Psychology experts and researchers have found that the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. Annie Dillard was quoted in an article published by Gettysurg college ,and it reads, “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives and for many people, a large portion of their day is spent at work”
It is therefore a fact that your job has a huge impact on the quality of life you live. Do you really want to spend your life doing something you hate, and by extension hate yourself for it?
Many years ago, it has been established that careers took a certain path. Our parents had no choice but to walk this path that we -the younger generation- consider to be nearing extinction. For them, there was no other choice! Once they had been set for education in a particular field, even down to a particular specialization in the field, the individual was saddled to acquire skill and practice in that field for his lifetime.
To us, that sounds sad right?
Growing up in a generation like theirs -our parents- meant only one thing, finish school and get a 9–5 job or don’t go to school and turn out poor. Getting a job was not a difficult ordeal. Easily, people got jobs after school because hands were needed to fulfill certain economic needs. Many however were satisfied with the jobs they got because it seemed like a good deal. The country’s currency had good value and so compensation seemed to live up to the term. Even when workers did not feel very satisfied with their jobs, the benefits it offered kept them sane.
But what is the situation now? Are jobs still readily available? Are compensations or salaries still worth the stay? Is the currency’s value still worth staying unhappy at a job for? Are people still looking for a 9–5 career to secure their social, financial and emotional lives?
Not entirely so. Even when we have been nurtured in a particular field of study, we seem to venture into much more. The percentage of youths that are taking advantage of this discovery are increasing by the minutes. However for many people, it is still easier to work a job because they could not think of anything else to make a living. Even when they had the imagination, the resources were simply not available.
Many Nigerian Youths are in search of jobs, yet, labour statistics reports that 7.9 million Nigerian youths aged 15–34 are currently unemployed.
This indeed would be scary if an alternative did not exist -our imagination! It would be appropriate to prescribe a healthy mix of exposure, imagination and re-imagination when it comes to settling for a satisfying career. Get creative! If you could imagine yourself doing something without getting easily tired of it, perhaps its the solution to the career you’ve always dreamed of.
As a matter of fact, our greatest creativeness lies in our deepest desires to do things others will benefit from. When you think about creating benefits or value, a good point to keep the imaginative spirits up is that the population of the world is about 7.8 billion people. This means there is still so many people we can do things to benefit. While it may be necessary to work with or for other people in terms of exposure and imaginative expansion, it sometimes may be pointless and wasteful working a 9–5 job to promote someone’s vision when you are needed to resolve some form of problems many others are facing.
In the light of this realization, there is a clause -our imagination has to be realistic or else it would get us chasing the wind. Imagination is the key to unveiling great possibilities. Re-imagining is paramount for the implementation of feasible projects. Your ideal work environment, career and lifestyle is dependent on how creative, passionate and sensitive to occurrences around you. Your imagination has to fuel a discovery, reimagination has to be one that sets the fire to the dried woods.
The next time you tell yourself or other people you’re getting to work, imagine the very thing that demands your selflessness and unconditional happiness.
