I think it’s time to stand up for an increasingly oppressed minority.
Those of us who – whisper it – like to work a lot, a lot.
Recently it seems like every day someone else posts a link on Facebook or Twitter about the cult of overworking and about how it’s so harmful to your health.
Inspiring messages about how on their deathbeds, people never regret spending time with friends and family and always regret spending it in the office, flood social media. It’s all very moving.
Apparently.
I get it. I get that friends and family and stuff are important.
But you know what? I like working.
There, I said it.
There are lots of people I know – some of them extended family – who don’t appear to have actually worked a day in their lives. I feel sorry for them. They’ll never know the sweet, silent satisfaction of rising while the world sleeps, simply because you need several hours run up to the day in order to get everything done. They’ll never understand the feeling of driving home, exhausted and exhilarated at the amount of work you’ve manage to do.
In the tradition of these inspiring posts about Why You Should Slow Down and Stop Working So Hard, I’ve done my own five point list in praise of working your backside off.
1: There is Nothing like the Feeling of Working Really Hard.
You know you’re at your limit. You know that the deadline is speeding towards you. And you know that when you hit that deadline with all your work done, the rush of adrenaline is going to be awesome.
2: Working Really Hard makes you value Every Minute.
My first job was working in a DIY store. I was 13 and I did not work hard. I was bloody awful at my job. I used to watch the clock when I wasn’t spilling paint or giving bad DIY advice. That clock played mind games that Guantanamo would reject as too cruel. An hour would look like five minutes on That Bloody Clock. In my life as a journalist I watched the clock a lot too. Always wishing I could squeeze extra minutes in the day because all the ones allotted were full. I know which state of affairs I preferred.
3: Earning It.
In that DIY store I worked 8.30am to 5.30pm, with half an hour break for lunch. I got paid twelve quid. I bloody loved being handed that money at the end of the day. I had really, really earned it.
4: Effort and Reward.
I like platitudes. I like inspiring quotes. Quotes like ‘Nothing worth having was ever easily won’ and ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’. They are both totally true. I’ve worked harder than I ever have in the last five years and I have lost count of the number of people who call me ‘lucky’ to get to present radio shows, write in newspapers, and create scripts.
5: Work is its own Reward.
Maybe it’s because I’m the son of an immigrant father. Maybe it’s because I’m the son of a proper old-fashioned working class mum. Work in my house wasn’t only a means to an end, it was an end in itself. If work is its own reward, then the more you work, the more you get rewarded, right? I’m not saying that the family and friends aren’t important, but the ones that are important, get it and they will support you if you are working to better your position, to create something brilliant or simply because it is What You Do.
Is it easy for me to write this because I am one of those lucky people who genuinely absolutely loves what he gets to do for a living? You’re reading someone who has worked in a fish and chip shop, delivered pizzas, worked in a university kitchen (only job I ever got fired from. Turned up drunk. Amusing) been a waiter, worked on a traveling carnival (true story), literally cleaned out drains and sold photographs door to door.
This is not a perspective from an ivory tower.
I just like working.
I think my perspective is worth hearing too.
nickahad 