110,000 Hours
Take a look at this list of words….
satisfying
enjoyable
interesting
gratifying
fulfilling
enriching
fun
What if those were the words that best described your experience of being at work? Sound crazy? For some, this may already be happening. They like what they do. They like the people with whom they work. They feel good about being there. For others, the idea of those words being used to describe their job feels almost unfathomable. Like work? Are you kidding?
No. I’m definitely not kidding. And yes, it’s possible to work for a company where good stuff happens. Where people receive more than a paycheck and benefits. Where they enjoy supportive relationships, an environment that invites and strengthens integrity. Work that expands their skills: a place where people actually get to grow as human beings. What a concept.
If you are leading a company, working for a company or interviewing at a company, I want you to really take this in…over the course of your life, you are going to spend around 110,000 hours at work.
ONE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND hours. I’m guessing that this is not an amount of time you want to suffer or sleepwalk through. This is living time you will dedicate to some sort of enterprise or endeavor. If the only thing you are getting out of it is money and benefits, I suggest you may be selling your life short.
For those of you who exclaim, “That’s Pollyanna nonsense!,” I get it. We are so conditioned to accept work as a struggle that many of us tend to defend it as such. But, that’s simply a conditioned mindset calling the shots—it’s not our natural affinity.
We can shape and create business to be anything we choose it to be.
But, choice is the differentiating factor here. Default, legacy and inurement are generally not choices made consciously, but rather the result of unquestioned programming. To bring it into consciousness, simply take a moment and think about it…how do you really want to spend that 110,000 hours of your life?
If you could change 3 things in your business right now, what would they be?