It’s ironic that the job we want to escape is all too often the thing that leaves us no time at all to chase our plans to achieving freedom.
Why do we put something we dislike higher on the priority list than something we dream of achieving? Maybe it has to do with how we trick ourselves into believing that we’re important to the company. Of course, if it’s all going to fall apart without you, that means you’re obligated to keep it all together – no matter how many hours it means you work back.
Whether it really would collapse or not, your boss will always keep you as busy as you let them make you. It’s almost as though your salary has a condition attached that unless you’re exhausted, stressed and can’t get everything done, you’re not really earning it. Has anyone invented the phrase “human overclocking” yet?
I have seen it somewhere that this is a deliberate management strategy. When you’re so exhausted that you get home and collapse, you have no time or energy to chase other jobs, let alone to try and escape from the rat race. You also don’t get the chance to think, or you might realise that your life is being spent chasing other people’s goals. If you realised that, you might just start pulling some of your time back to devote to chasing your own objectives instead of theirs. Can’t have that, can we?
We all love to feel that what we do is important, because then we feel important too. But the hidden price tag is that upwards push for your job on the priority ladder, and the downward push on everything else outside work – including your life. Are you holding yourself prisoner to the job by the emotional ties you have to it? These days, all too often, company loyalty and commitment to the job is expected from you, but there’s no loyalty and commitment in return. In most cases, I can guarantee that emotional link you have to the company is only one way – as all too many discover during a downturn.
Yes, sometimes that extra 2 hours you work back is for something that absolutely can’t wait. More often, though, it can’t wait simply because you know tomorrow’s already full, so there’s no way it would fit in. That’s when you have to ask yourself whether you should be sacrificing your time – and the things you’d use it to achieve – to cope with an excessive workload? If things don’t get done because there’s too much for one person to do, maybe that’s more your manager’s problem (or something for HR to fix) than your own?
Where do your dreams sit in the priority list? If you’re not getting closer to them fast enough, or at all, then maybe you need to review what’s sitting above it, and whether it should be there at all.
