The blessing of work

I was in a group discussion the other day discussing how men can be better leaders at home. Eventually, the conversation came around to the balance between work and the other responsibilities of life (especially family).

One person brought up the fact that men tend to be too obsessed with work. They work too much to the neglect of their families, trying hard to advance to earn titles that mean little in the overall scheme of things and to earn money that they really don’t need. He used Matt. 6 as support (“Seek ye first the kingdom of God…”).

I am somewhat sympathetic to that position but l don’t think it is as simple as that. Yes, we tend toward materialism and we often don’t even know it. I could give examples but we all have examples. And yes, we tend to rely on money rather than God.

But I also see that perspective as potentially idealistic and out of whack. Here is the other side of the story and a few statistics you might enjoy.

* The average work week has declined from 66 hours in 1850 to 51 hours in 1909 and is under 35 hours today.
* Parents (especially dads) today spend far more time with their children than previous generations.
* The average American will spend close to one half of their life in leisure (accounting for time off from work and retirement). This is unprecedented even in the US and certainly in almost any other part of the world at any period and time.
* Retirement is a new concept that previous generations would have never even dreamed of. People used to expect to have to work until they died.

In other words, our outlook on work is highly skewed because of a very unique bubble we have been blessed to live in. We worry that we aren’t spending time with our kids when the reality is that we have far more time with them than our grandparents might have had with their children. Or we worry about wives having to work outside the home when other generations would have considered it impossible for one person to support a family with only 40 hours of work a week.

So here is my perspective: don’t beat yourself up if you work a lot and don’t feel like a failure if both you and your spouse have to work to make ends meet. That is the way it has always been and I will not be surprised if that is not the future too. I think there is a high likelihood that you will see the single-earner-40-hour work week scenario go the way of the dinosaurs as the global economy continues to change the world.

Work is just what adults do. We won’t avoid it; our goal should be to just make the best of it. I have three quick ideas for you on that.

1) Enjoy your work. Yes, I know most people don’t. And I know that I have a perspective myself that is not quite realistic because outside a few landscaping summers, I have never had a job that most people would consider drudgery.

That being said, I am thankful that I love the work I do and very honestly, there are very few things I would rather do than my work. My idea of a vacation day is just a slightly different version of my normal work day–perhaps with a few boring things eliminated.  I have never understood the mindset where the work week is a torture that is escaped on Friday afternoon. To me, that is really messed up.

Find work that you love to do. Either change jobs and learn to love the one you have. You won’t escape work so figure out how to enjoy it.

2) Align your work with your spiritual goals. Again, not everyone has a job where this will be easy. Some will find it very possible and perhaps, some should find a new job where it will be easier.

But the truth is of course that all work is spiritual. Doing your best has spiritual implications. So does achievement. So does providing for a family. Working hard to provide security for a family and maybe pay for children to go to college is not anything but noble. Don’t for one second think otherwise.

If you can’t make a connection between the work you do and real significance, you are just going to be miserable when working. You will start to compartmentalize your work from the rest of your life, thinking that work is just a necessity to living rather than a significant part of your life in itself.

3) Include your family if possible.  I suspect that farmers of past centuries worked twice as many hours as we do. They also had to raise children and my guess is that maximized the time needed to do both by getting the children involved in the farm work. In that respect, they had an advantage over us.

I actually can get my children involved in my work but I understand that many cannot. If your children can’t work with you in your career, get them working along side you in the work that you do out of your career. For example, we decided to let our housekeeper go so we could train our children to do that work. That by the way is a win on many levels from saving money to teaching valuable lessons.

Here is how I would summarize: your goal should not necessarily be to work less. Rather, it should be to make the work you do more significant. I think that can occur both on a family and spiritual level.