In his book “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” (2018), David Graeber argues that many contemporary jobs are ‘bullshit’. He means that people report their jobs as devoid of significance, and if such jobs never existed, it would not change anything in the world. While working on this book, Graeber received numerous emails from people across the world sharing their experiences of being employed in ‘bullshit jobs’. Reading these testimonies made it clear to me that for eight and a half years, I held a position within an organisation that matches this definition. It is not that I did not feel this was the case, but rather, this book and these testimonies showed me that my intuition was correct.

From 2013 to 2021, I worked in a global financial organisation. After a couple of years, the initial happiness of obtaining a white-collar job dissipated. I spent most of my time doing so-called “back office” jobs: “fraud prevention” and “compliance.” These job titles and descriptions came with an air of importance. However, behind this shiny veneer and the promise of an engaging and worthwhile experience, there was nothing but complete boredom and meaninglessness.

These jobs were (and are!) advertised, among other things, for creativity and decision-making, but in reality, there was none of that. All I had to do was follow a “rule book” or “what-to-do” guide, with little or no need to deviate from it. As a fraud prevention agent, my only task was to monitor transactions, trying to detect any fraudulent activity such as stolen identity or account. While sometimes there was such activity, most of the time, there was nothing of this sort (I would say around 95% of cases were not fraudulent). At this ratio, and considering that I had to do this work for ten hours daily, the job was completely dull. I even hoped to find any sign of fraudulent activity but with no luck most of the time. So, in short, my everyday job was to sit and monitor transactions for ten hours a day, in most cases with no action at all. Most of the time, it seemed there was no point in me even being there. Needless to say, the fraud prevention department was soon terminated due to automation (what a surprise!).

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I then ended up in the compliance department, where my job was to onboard individual and business customers. The daily tasks were to review customers’ documents (IDs and utility bills mainly) and approve or disapprove them. Again, I had to execute strictly prescribed actions, which were pretty simple: look at the docs, tick the box, click “approve” (or disapprove), copy-paste a standard note, and repeat. And again, I had to do it for ten hours daily. At this stage, I was consumed by not only boredom but a sense of futility and meaninglessness. What am I doing this for? Do people really need this? If it were not for Central Bank regulations, nobody would have cared about it. Nothing would have changed in people’s lives if this job did not exist.

Furthermore, it seemed to me that somebody could have done these jobs in about four hours a day with some effort. However, you are not allowed to leave the workplace; you must stay in the office for another six hours, pretending to be doing something worthwhile. Maybe I should not complain because it allowed me time for my education. But I could easily do this work at home! What is the point of me being in the office doing nothing of value for the employer?

I also began to see the office environment as artificial, meaningless, and even ridiculous—countless meetings that rarely achieved anything useful. (Although, they effectively wasted another hour or so of my six hours “doing nothing” in the office). People walking through the office hugging their laptops with one hand while holding a cup of coffee in the other with the overwhelming self-perception of immense importance while doing, in many cases, the same meaningless, boring jobs; team leaders that try to steer you in the “right” direction, trying to motivate you, albeit with no success in many cases, to “improve” you, trying to convince you to look positively on the boredom consuming you.

Everything the company does is for profit, and I, as an employee, was a part of it. My work did not contribute anything of value to society, nor did it change people’s lives for the better. I was there just to help make money by preventing the loss of money. Depression became a normal state of my daily life. Seeing other people so enthusiastic about their careers in the office, I began to think that something was probably wrong with me and not with the job. However, some people I worked with confessed to me that they felt the same, and while I was consoled that I was not alone in this predicament, it was even worse due to the realisation that many people in the same office feel the same about their jobs but still work there.

If people asked me back then, “What do you do for a living?” I would be embarrassed to answer. Perhaps many people were proud that they held such positions with fancy titles, but for me, it was like confessing that for eight and a half years, I had been doing something futile without any meaning whatsoever.

On the other hand, it was an important experience after all. It showed me that I must avoid such jobs in the future and look for a more meaningful endeavour. I think that most of us will agree that nothing can be more meaningful than doing something useful for society and people. This can be achieved in many different ways. While the majority of ‘bullshit jobs’ are highly paid, at the end of the day, I believe it is nothing compared to the feeling of satisfaction when what you do has a positive impact on the people around you.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of viewing the world: the Ceramic (or hydraulic) view and the Organic view. The Ceramic worldview is individualistic and sees the world as concrete, solid, measurable, and definable. The world and everything in it, including people, is mere stuff to be manipulated, collected, owned, bought, sold, killed, stuffed, put in boxes and hung on walls. Trophies that mark the exploits and successful adventures of men (because it's nearly always men). The ceramic view is afraid, alienated, isolated, suspicious, narcissistic and alone in this universe. There is nothing beyond the physical world; therefore, its spoils must be controlled and protected because there is always someone out to take what's yours.

According to this worldview, there must be a boss, and the boss must tell everyone else what to do and when to do it. Otherwise, people will be disorganised and unproductive. In this top-down approach, control and productivity are the keys to success. Data is how the ceramic worldview appraises your efforts, and your effort is the measure of your value to them. If you do not put in the effort, you are forced to the edges with barely the entitlement to live. Most people find themselves in the middle, on the rat wheel, constantly proving themselves worthy of existence. If you cannot or choose not to rent your body and mind to these men, to work your bollocks off for the best years of your life, then you do not deserve to have a roof over your head, good healthcare, food in your belly, and a sense of security.

On the other hand, the Organic view is a collectivist view that sees the world and everyone in it as self-organised, self-sufficient, and supportive. If left to their own devices, human beings figure it out in the most optimal way and support one another in the process. This view sees us as inherently motivated, creative and innovative, and given the right environment, we discover solutions to problems that benefit everyone equally. It sees benefit in the effort in and of itself rather than the promise of reward. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain, according to the organic view, because there is always enough for everyone. You lose today, you win tomorrow - there is no need to hoard, to manipulate, to steal either legally or illegally.

There is no boss, no bodied or disembodied entity making it all happen. Cause and effect, the idea that someone or something must have got the ball rolling, that something made it bang way back in the beginning are of the ceramic worldview and of linear thinking. It is a primitive concept analogous to fleas in a jar experiment. In contrast to the ceramic worldview that trusts nobody, the organic worldview is inherently trusting. But this is not to be confused with naivety. On the contrary, the organic worldview understands complexity and allows things to work themselves out, for the dust to settle of its own accord, so to speak. It is the Ceramic worldview that is naive.

Now why is this important?

At work, this idea is incredibly important. Especially when it comes to hiring people, forming teams and leading an organisation. Because, you can't watch everyone all the time, or even some of the time. Besides, research has shown that people's performance suffers dramatically when they know they are being watched. The Hawthorn Experiments showed us this one hundred years ago, and subsequent studies continue to highlight this fact. There is an exception, however. If tasks are simple and repetitive, then surveillance may work, but if tasks are complex, surveillance has a negative impact on performance. It's exhausting not to offer trust, and without it, there is no team. There is no collective energy moving in the same direction. Instead, lack of trust breeds a culture of individualism. Your people might use language that they think reflects teamwork and unity, but it's all for show. It's surface acting and contains no heart and no soul. They are in it for their own survival because that is the atmosphere your lack of trust has created.

The workplace, as we have largely constructed it, is a fake plastic environment where people pretend. They put on a show, and sometimes they do a "good" job of it. They may even fool themselves most of the time. But they are not invested, not really. And you'll come to know this when the shit hits the fan, because when the shit hits the fan, you need people capable of solving problems. Capable and equipped with the psychological, emotional and intellectual capacity to come up with solutions to the novel problems that shit hitting the fan creates. If you have not cultivated an environment of trust, one where people are autonomously motivated and supported, where they feel competent, and a part of something worthwhile, the answers to shitty problems won't come.

The universe is self-organising; we don't need to force its conformity. We began to understand this around 300 or 400 years ago. Arguably, some cultures did so way before this. So, in your work and in your business, be inclined to embrace an organic concept of life (trust) rather than a ceramic one (mistrust). It may be the difference between survival or not.

Slán!

I help the self-employed and small business owners run better businesses by applying psychological principles to work. Find out how.

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I’m a bit of a utilitarian in that sense.

How did I get this way?

Am I unique in this line of thinking?

At the same time, I like to take my time with certain things. I like to sit in the kitchen in my chair with a cup of coffee and stare out the window for thirty minutes. I like to take an hour to chill out after the gym on a Saturday morning. So in my own way, I “waste” time too.

But it’s not wasted, is it? (rhetorical question).

This morning, my wife is working so couldn’t take the dog on her usual 5 km walk. So I suggested that I’d do it after I walked our youngest to school. It was rather a run around in an enclosed space in the park than a lengthy walk, but the dog enjoyed itself and that’s better than nothing. Even so, the voice in my head said, you’ve work to do. You could be using this time to get things done.

So I fought my worky brain and walked the dog.

In doing so, there was a mild sense of enjoyment, of just taking time to do something that didn’t have an end in mind—an ulterior motive. I met a fella I know too, he was walking his dog. We chatted about things, random stuff like the temperament of each dog, kids’ football and the local club, working from home and so on.

The point is that doing things as we’ve always done them means we’re likely missing out on the ordinary everyday encounters that give life colour and make it enjoyable. We’re too caught up in utility, in achieving objective things, attainment, and material wealth and all the while we’re missing out on human wealth.

According to Richard Ryan and Ed Deci’s Self Determination Theory of human motivation, these human experiences are the nutriments of life, without which, human beings become ill and suffer. It is through the overbearing pressure to produce, to meet the demands of the market and the workplace that we begin to deteriorate.

Through these practices of just walking for the sake of it, of meeting people by chance and having one-to-one conversations about our lives we make connections and build relationships. These, in turn, fuel our needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness; the three legs on the stool of motivation and well-being.

It’s a constant battle with oneself but it’s one worth having.

Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know...

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

- Kurt Vonnegut

I did some drawing a while ago — a portrait in charcoal. It was my first effort, took me ages and it was good. I enjoyed the process and the result and I learned something universal that words find hard to convey. I shared it on social media and the response was very positive, to say the least. My family said I should draw more, I was “talented” apparently. I took a stab at a few other portraits but I dropped the practice pretty much completely. The easel I made sits fragmented in the shed, my charcoal and drawing tools sit in a drawer in my office, and attempted portraits lay tucked into a gap between the wall and a bookshelf in my office.

So what was the point of even trying?

Why bother if you drop whatever it is for something else on merely a whim?

Would you not just stick to one thing and perfect that?

Well, for me and others like me, there is the thrill of trying new things. Objective externally measured success means little. Ok, I get a short-term thrill from recognition, but the truth of the matter is that I run a mile from it. I really don’t like attention, and that’s a bit of a problem, because like most people, at the same time it’s nice to be recognised. We are social animals after all, and without community and relatedness, we fragment completely and die. And so there is an internal fight with oneself.

Freud said we (das Ich) are not masters in our own house. This is true, it seems.

But recognised or not, the value of the work must be in the doing of it for its own sake, for the inherent challenge and enjoyment we receive from it. Because the doing of it is our life and we live that now. Expectation takes us out of now, out of our hearts and into our heads. Now is the only place we can be effective. Regardless, the recognition of others doesn’t last.

It’s a fight I’m willing to have until the end. It’s a fight with myself and others, too, where necessary. It doesn’t always turn to conflict, and although it might, I attempt to avoid that outcome. I realise that I’ll have to let this one slide. Other times there can’t be compromise, and there are casualties. Regardless, the fight with myself goes on.

It’s in the cutting of a slice of bread, the grading of an essay, the washing of dishes, the cooking of a meal, the hoovering of a carpet, the writing of a book, the painting of a child’s bedroom or the preparation of a proposal. It’s in everything, and although I recognise my behaviour as somewhat compulsive, it has to be followed. That said, I occasionally let myself off the hook.

There is relief and peace in that, which is vital for my sanity. Otherwise, the less-than-excellent doing of it would destroy me and, in the meantime, make inhabiting this organism impossible. Although my attention to detail is essential for achieving the highest standard I can, I can’t always get there, and often don’t. And even in that failure, there is a chance to gain, to understand something I didn’t before. It is a chance to have another go tomorrow.

Why all of this?

Because the effort is worth the result, and the result is worth the effort regardless of how the outcome looks. It is a circuitous path, and in the middle of all of that, I find myself.

It is process over outcome. Outcome informs process, but always process. Unfavourable outcome? Tweak the process. Favourable outcome? Maybe tweak the process anyway, but always process.

It is a resolution of the paradox, the finding in myself that stable something upon which I can rely. A harbour in the storm or an anchor when I’m all at sea. It is a safe place in me where I can go when the praise or criticism becomes too much. It is a core of something I cannot identify but is always there regardless of conditions. It affords me benefit in the trying of something for which I’m not qualified, and I can’t find it in yesterday or tomorrow, only now.

We all have it. But if we don’t know we do, we believe in the fight and are often willing to make unrecoverable sacrifices. We become convinced that all of this out here is so important. I get lost in it sometimes, too, and forget. Then I remember and remark on how foolish this thing is that I am. But even that’s ok—it has to be. Regardless of the thought or the outcome, the effort must be worth it.

Meanwhile, no one receives an exemption from the work of figuring this out.

Optimism is a feature of resilience. Optimistic people are considered better at handling challenging circumstances and setbacks than those who are not. To be optimistic is to feel generally positive about one’s future. It suggests that tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year will be better than today. We know everything won’t go our way every time, or even some of the time, but we expect that things will improve eventually. It’s what keeps us going in times of stress, anxiety, and even trauma. Optimism is a component of our worldview—our mindset and philosophy on life. It has a tendency to empower us even in times of difficulty, and it is an essential aspect of a healthy personality and attitude to life.

Optimists are people who anticipate positive outcomes, whether through the natural order of things or through perseverance and effort. Pessimists, on the other hand, hold the dominant belief that, on the whole, things are unlikely to get better regardless of effort. Pessimists expect unfavourable outcomes and are otherwise doubtful or hesitant about positive ones.

Of course, most of us lie somewhere on the spectrum between these two polar opposites. Talking about these states of mind, it is maybe better to discuss our tendencies towards one sense of things or the other. For example, you may be optimistic about your future work and career prospects but hold a more pessimistic view of meeting a partner and settling down. Pure optimism in the face of obvious difficulty may be considered naive and represent an unwillingness to face the reality of the situation. Most of us lie somewhere on the spectrum between the two apparent polar opposites but sometimes demonstrate strong, relatively stable or situational tendencies in one direction or the other.

In all of this, however, whether you consider yourself an optimist, a pessimist, or somewhere in between, there is the concept of linear time. We believe in our linear passage through life like a train on its tracks or a car on a road. Maybe the road or the track meanders along rather than running straight, and maybe it is not so well defined, but we’re on it regardless and there’s little we can do to avoid it other than to destroy one’s self. This is our concept of reality—all this goes on and we’re passing through it from birth to death. In the meantime, our control over conditions is only partial.

I measured my tendency toward optimism and it turns out that I am slightly pessimistic—according to the measure. I prefer to refer to myself as a realistic optimist. In other words, accept conditions as they are but expect better. My own particular answer to this problem of life has developed over time, and although I may not remember to employ it always, it sits in the corner of my mind. People help me remember the impermanence of things both good and bad. In the face of good or bad conditions, my response is, maybe.

Things are slow.
I wish they weren’t,
But I accept they are.
I expect they’ll change,
But maybe they won’t.
Regardless, I do the work.
Chop wood.
Carry water.
Chop wood.
Carry water.

Credit: Auld Stock.

Unworking is the new mid-week offering from The Sunday Letters Journal. It will be short, just like this one, or maybe longer…depends what I have to say. It’s for paid supporters of Sunday Letters, [this one’s free though] so if you’d like to get each one, become a supporter.

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Today is 1st May or May Day, also known as International Workers' Day or Labour Day. It is an annual celebration of labourers and the working-class (everyone except the political, financial and corporate elite to me and you). The origins of May Day date back to the European spring festival of the same name, but its modern association with workers' rights began in 1889 when the socialist organisation The Second International established by the Marxist International Socialist Congress, adopted a resolution calling for a global demonstration in support of the demand for an eight-hour workday. We take it for granted today, but there was a time when working people had little or no rights which included limitless working hours at the call of their employer (slave owner more like). People were mere tools to an financial and economic end and disposed of like old rags. It’s still the case albeit less obvious today.

The American Federation of Labor later selected May 1st to commemorate the Haymarket affair, a general strike in the United States that took place on May 1st, 1886. Since then, May Day has been observed as a yearly event, with the 1904 Sixth Conference of The Second International calling for all social democratic party organisations and trade unions to demonstrate for the establishment of the eight-hour workday, the class demands of the proletariat, and universal peace.

Some Quotes on Work for the day that’s in it

Hey, it’s International Workers’ Day. Take this opportunity to decide to take command of your own working life. You can do that even if you work for someone else. It is the realisation that you are a bonafide human being with legitimate creative interests that you have the right to satisfy over that of any corporation or employer. It doesn’t mean that we take and don’t give. It doesn’t mean that we hang employers on poles in the street. What commanding one’s own work does mean is realising we have a choice, and that our own personal welfare and that of the people we care about must come first.

Via , expanding on a thought on work by author, Joan Didion.

And so this raises the question; will I care when I’m gone? If I do not do the work or, indeed, never find it, or do work that I think is worthy of my time and effort and yet comes to nought, will I be remorseful? When I’m lying between the sheets in my final hours I will likely be empty for not doing it. Or I may have done it and yet heard no applause because they didn’t find it. Or they did and ignored it. Will I care? Who knows. I can’t answer any of this, and to do so might be interesting, but gains me little except anxiety. So the work, in this sense, is what I’m doing now. Who are you who reads this and could you give two fiddlers if I disappeared without a trace and everything I have ever written? That is also not a question for me because whether you read me or not, there is some compelling something that urges me to tap this keyboard regardless of open rates or comments.

Our work, whatever that may be, must be the following of a thread—an attempt to answer the question. What question? The one that can’t even be asked because it has no ultimately satisfactory form. But I know for sure, working for some other reason than the one that cannot be explained is a waste of whatever time we have. And if you have no clue to what I refer, perhaps you have some more searching or the doing of useless work to do. Regardless, get to work.

The time I spend in the morning in the kitchen, house empty except for me and the hum of the fridge in the background, is priceless. I fail to take it as my own too often, though, and I fall foul of busyness. Juggling one thousand things in the misled belief that I am getting somewhere, achieving something, but achieving little except the fuelling of a frayed, irritated and overwhelmed mind.

Looking at the world around us leads us to believe that being busy and occupied has merit and is the right way to live if we want to be wealthy and successful or even survive. It offers a very persuasive argument, but the reality is that this way of living breeds anxiety. It’s a treadmill, a rat wheel. Despite our efforts, we stay where we are, and on reflection, we realise our life has become one wasted, anxious existence. We didn’t do that thing we wanted, we needed to work and earn a living, to validate our existence. It’s a nonsense, and at some level, we understand this. It’s why for me, the solitude and quiet of the kitchen in the morning are so vital. It’s like a church.

I think we reach a point in our working lives where the idea of value in busy tends to run out of road. It becomes glaringly apparent that there not only has to be a better way to live and work, but there is one—somewhere, even though we might not know where or what that is. We sense we have no option but to ignore other people’s agendas. It is, in a way, entirely selfish. Call it healthy narcissism if you like. Typically, narcissism is associated with seeking attention for personal gratification and is considered either vulnerable or grandiose in its orientation. But that’s not what I mean here. Instead, it is tuning out from the noise and need for verification from others and tuning into something more subtle and nuanced. I think that great and valuable work exists in the processing of this information.

I believe there is a time or space for action, and we have the capacity to know when the time is right to go and not to go. So I’m not against getting busy per se, but we need to find the right mix. We need to call it for ourselves—to command our own work. Working to the agenda of others means handing them the say-so. They get to tell us when to start and when to stop. One o’clock rolls around, and it’s ok to have lunch. Five o’clock and quitting time—or not. School teaches us this. It is a conveyor belt, an assembly line for industry. It is the breeder of anxiety in people. It teaches us to fulfil the needs and demands of the Other, to pursue the future and ignore the present.

I’m still figuring it out…hopefully, you are too. Stay tuned.

You don’t need to be a monthly paid subscriber to support Sunday Letters. Give a one-off tip if you enjoyed this post, or share it with your network. Thanks for reading Unworking—the short mid-week post on changing how we work from The Sunday Letters Journal.

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There’s less fat in milk. Slowly but surely, they’ve been stripping it out to the point where we don’t realise their stealth. They call it full-fat, but it’s not. And not every milk supplier gives you the same fat content. I know nothing of the regulations around milk production, but my guess is that “full-fat” milk needs to have a fat content that falls between certain limits. You’ll recognise what I mean here if you happen to heat your milk. The more fat in the milk, the more froth it produces when you heat it. I have a small espresso machine at home and I can see the difference in fat content of the various brands of milk we buy.

It’s not only milk, it’s meat, cereal, peanut butter, vegetables, chocolate bars, and many other products. I noticed recently when I went to the press, that a well known cereal recently reduced the size of the box by 100g but the price stayed the same. At the same time, they did a 2-for1 “offer” at the supermarket to shift the old boxes. Manufacturers use stealth and “marketing” to convince us we are getting more when really we’re getting less. They think we are stupid….and they are right. Because we keep buying their crappy products that contain less and less product.

When I talk about work, I refer not only to the work you and I do as individuals and the importance of that in terms of our own individual welfare, I also refer to the work of business. If you run a business, be fair and honest. The business world will suck you in and try to convince you that stealth and dishonesty is valid and right…it’s just business after all. But the truth is that we must be vigilant to the gradual erosion of personal ethics. The world of business should not be used as a veil over deceitful and dishonest tactics. A means to extract as much from people as possible without any concern for value. This behaviour is as shitty as it can get and leads to all kinds of abhorrent treatment of others and the planet.

Command your own work, and be fair and honest in the process. It will stand you out against the backdrop of a shitty marketplace.

The Bald Barista is a coffee shop on Aungier Street in Dublin. It’s a small place with seating for about 20 people and a somewhat inefficiently arranged service area to the front. Inefficient because takeaway customers don’t have a reliable flow space in which to order and wait for their coffee. For this reason, I’m a little turned off.

But that’s more than made up for by the ever-pleasant, more-bald-than-me Ausie making my coffee. The space wasn’t so chaotic this morning at 09:55, so we had time and space for a quick chat. He chats to everyone regardless, but today it was me who had time.

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I am leaving social media behind—for now. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on—they wear me out. They are an irritant and a distraction from the important work I should be doing, work that we all should be doing. They take up space in our minds that we do not have available. Not to mention that they gather information about us and sell it to the highest bidder. Instead, it seems a better use of my time and headspace to focus my efforts writing here on Substack, Medium, and web properties that I own and allow people like you to simply find it. So rather than feed the algorithm, I’ll starve it. And if enough of us do that, maybe it will die.

Enter Substack Notes

Notes is a content feed kind of like how Twitter and Facebook used to be when they first landed. But we all know what they have become. Notes is brand new, straight out of the packet from Substack last night and I like the look of it.

Join me on Notes

New Content

I’m writing a couple of short ebooks about work. Here are the book covers to serve as an intro. All going well, having sidelined social media, I’ll create sufficient mental space to get these books finished over the next couple of months. Then maybe, I’ll return to social media to leverage its reach.

Stay tuned for more on these releases.

“To the conflict set up by money between buyers and sellers of labour has been added another conflict, set up by the very means of production, between those who have the machine at their disposal, and those who are at the disposal of the machine.”

Simone Weil, Oppression & Liberty1

What is the machine today but an algorithm, an invisible machine. For the ones who make our clothes, pots and pans, furniture, PVC windows, rugs, cups and bowls, plumb and wire our houses and offices, and fix our air conditioning, there is still the physical mechanism and all the abrasiveness of that. They can walk away from the machine of their labour if they wanted. But for those of us in the so-called knowledge economy, the machine lives in us and takes on another form. It is an idea of ourselves and of others and it controls us. Our labour is beneath the surface but no less damaging to our spirit.

In the open letter on AI published by the Future of Life Institute, they say, “recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.” Has this not been the story of human development since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Winning at all costs and figuring out how to clean up the mess later, or maybe not at all.

We allowed ourselves to become subservient to the machine of industry, politics and finance. They run the show and are usually sufficiently distant from the fallout to survive. There has always been fallout, but we have a choice—stay inside the machine, or get out. If we are inside the machine, or if the machine is inside us when it fails, we die.

Unworking is the new mid-week offering from The Sunday Letters Journal. I’ll write something new here every morning, Monday to Friday. It will be short, just like this one, or maybe longer…depends what I have to say. It’s for paid supporters of Sunday Letters, [this one’s free though] so if you’d like to get each one, become a supporter.

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Although we tend to think otherwise, clever is not the production of facts. We might have access to masses of dates and events, facts and figures, data and various other information, but without the ability to see what can’t be seen, this information merely tells us what has happened up to now. So if that’s the basis of our actions, we’re already behind the curve. It might tell us what may occur next under broadly similar conditions, but what’s really important is usually out of sight. It comes from left field and surprises us for better or worse. It’s what disrupts the status quo. It’s what we fear most.

For some, AI may be the solution to the discomfort of not knowing. But even if it was, are we ready to hand over our decision-making to machines? Arguably, we’ve already done that. Millions of people disengage their moral reasoning for the say-so of the system—of the machine. “it’s not my fault,” “The boss told me to do it,” “I was just doing my job”, “it’s the system that’s the problem”.

Clever is much more than data and the processing of data. Besides, as soon as it’s measured, it’s out of date—expired. So relying on it leaves us exposed to the evolution of the phenomenon. That’s why in statistical analysis, we allow for error in our computation (e). Even if our technology was capable of capturing all the variables, how could we possibly interpret the results? We’d become reliant on the algorithm.

Feelings matter.

They represent the capacity of the organism to read the room and tell us when something is off—Proprioception. Conscious thought it is not. We sense. Feelings are clever, nuanced and creative. They are what distinguish us from objects and make us who we are. They are what save us from moral disengagement and remind us that machines, no matter how clever we make them, will always be absent of that undefinable element. #CommandYourOwnWork

Unworking is the new mid-week offering from The Sunday Letters Journal. I’ll write something new here every morning, Monday to Friday. It will be short, just like this one, or maybe longer…depends what I have to say. It’s for paid supporters of Sunday Letters, [this one’s free though] so if you’d like to get each one, become a supporter.

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Magnolia was the standard in the 80s and 90s, maybe even beyond that. Any commercial painter will tell you that this was the go-to of every decorator or builder who was merely interested in getting the job done. It’s cheap, and it’s everywhere, and if you just need to get a coat on the walls, then Magnolia was yer man. To use something other than that required thought, consideration, creativity and planning.

Writing is like that. As I sit in front of this machine, I know where I need to go to avoid magnolia. I consider the depths to which I need to descend in myself to produce something of any value to you, and I turn away from it. Then nothing is written. I get nothing, and readers get nothing, either. The walls are left bare.

We know what kind of work we want to do. We know the kind of work that gets attention without trying. The paradox is that when we have little or no concern for what others think and do it from a place of intrinsic motivation, there’s a greater chance of it carrying meaning and value than otherwise. It’s the stuff we would do even if we weren’t getting paid for it.

So why don’t we do it? What’s the problem?

Well, it’s kind of like the way we’ve been schooled to think and feel…if the work doesn’t produce a measurable value now or very soon from now, what’s the point? And what’s the point of spending hours or even a couple of days on something that few or nobody we ever see?

Flawed logic.

In a world that’s about to be overrun by machine-made content that offers nothing different from everything else, there is an imperative for humans to write and share their novel ideas. To be thoughtful, considerate, and creative.

The ideas I have to share are related to work—commanding one’s own work. It’s nothing new, people have been writing about this for a long time, but I’m passionate about it, so it feels like it needs an outlet. I believe there’s little purpose in life unless we do this. Otherwise, we merely blend into the background like a trillion other people. We become magnolia.

After all, work is what we get up to do every day. It’s what makes the world and is an integral part of our individual and collective identity. Better to create that for ourselves rather than turning the wheel for some corporation that doesn’t give two shits about us anyway. They want us to be predictable and dependable. They need us to meet the standard set by someone else.

AI will soon replace much of the mundane work we are doing. It’s already doing it. So where does that leave us? Perhaps with the chance to be something other than Magnolia?

Unworking is the new mid-week offering from The Sunday Letters Journal. I’ll write something new here every morning, Monday to Friday. It will be short, just like this one, or maybe longer…depends what I have to say. It’s for paid supporters of Sunday Letters, so if you’d like to get each one, become a supporter.

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What I want to say when I write is always painted up in something else. I never get there, never finish, never say what I want to say. We’re like that, human beings—especially those of us who have spent time accumulating measures of apparent academic merit. We can’t say what we really want to say without “backing it up”. We discount our intuition. Data is primary. To forward a subjective assessment on this, that, or the other, is flawed and often irrelevant insofar as it cannot necessarily, be applied to the majority. What the majority agree, therefore, is what is. To change this, we must exercise influence over others. To stand alone is to shout into the vacuum.

Work is such a fundamental part of living that it is hard not to address what is detrimental to us in the doing of it. But what is work, and what lies beneath the apparent obviousness of it all? We are so sure what it is, and we are so sure that everyone must do it. Not to work is to be a parasite. It is to be an illegitimate member of society. But why? On the other end of the scale, there are those who do not work and have amassed fortunes on the backs of those who do. They have wealth, and so they are not parasites, surely? Not to ask why, not ask but demand answers to why things are how they are is to ignore the truth of our reality. But we’d rather not know. Carry on; nothing to see here. Distractions abound. The few control and direct the many—that is the truth. So how can the many be free, do we want to be free, and is it even possible?

Ultimate freedom implies a choice, and perhaps choice is illusory. Unless we choose death. Maybe we are all choosing death but in different ways. Being part of a collective, we forgo ourselves. We sacrifice a little or a lot. The nature of our reality enforces itself, not as we see it really, but as they see it—the collective. We are reared with it. The family structure forms the template for Fromm’s socially typical character. Mammy and Daddy leave and go to work, so I must do that too. Just as they have inherited the cookie cutter for work from their parents, I inherit it from them, although the cookies are of a slightly different recipe than before. And I take it. And then I’m 40 and tired of eating cookies no matter the recipe; the cookies are always shaped the fucking same. It is so fundamental and accurate until it’s not. I live, or I die on the discovery of this.

Hunger gnaws at my guts, and I can ignore it to the very end—to bring myself to my own end. What is it that I am that I can allow the organism to die? No, in fact, to kill it! I can take myself to the edge of a bridge if I’d rather be done with me sooner. But instead, I die a slow death at the hands of myself and in the minds of everyone else to whom I strive to please and to be productive—my father and mother in them. In the meantime, I work and eke out a living or at least try. To make myself worthy of praise or at least sufficient enough to be ignored, to blend into the background. So who am I, the worker? An abstraction, a mule hauling ideas and things around on the beck and call of some other who is merely a mule too. Who are these others to whom we subordinate ourselves? To whom do they subordinate themselves, or are they themselves the Gods?

What lies beneath the surface of our activity, our destruction of this place we call home and of ourselves? What lies beneath but the emptiness of something unidentifiable. Something that we so desperately try to fill with things that rot and pollute. We are mule carcasses, vessels of something we can’t understand, and our minds operate on its surface. It’s like a humming fridge…we are aware of the vacancy but cannot identify it given its essence. And so we work ourselves to the bone if we are deemed worthy of a job at all—made ourselves valuable and productive enough to be wanted, to be hired. And then the indoctrination takes hold, and we are lost to the work under the design of others.

Mammy is gone away, and so too is Daddy. Now I am alone and with all these others who are alone too. Who am I? My time will come, and I will take up the human imperative to work. Who benefits? Me? Hardly. I follow their lead and pursue the unobtainable thing that I have lost and that they have lost before me. That’s all we share—absence, loneliness, alienation from ourselves and from one another immersed in work, not of our choosing. Work is meaningless, and in the pursuit of the thing we’ve never had, we sacrifice one another for the sake of a means of accounting. We have become abstractions.

Auden said, “between labour and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labour is, from his point of view, voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labour or work depends not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a labourer.” More often than not, however, personal interest has little to do with work because we are part of the system, a cog in the machine of enterprise. And if we find meaning, purpose, and personal interest, it is in spite rather than because of the job.

In his differentiation between workers and labourers, Auden said, “workers die of coronaries and forget their wives’ birthdays”. The same can be said of both women and men today. And what of their children while they work? Their birthdays are membered but for the hire of a bouncy castle and the imperative to put on a show. Workers were privileged, according to Auden. “What percentage of the population in a modern technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers?” Auden asked. “At a guess, I would say sixteen per cent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.”

Dress it up as you will. Parade in your experts of mind and behaviour, happiness and sadness, understand my motivation and become my surrogates. I will serve you and give you the best hours of my life. And when my time is done, I’ll no doubt retire to my field and eat carrots.

Today in Sunday Letters, we’re taking a practical approach to the challenges of life and work. The following material is taken from version 2 of the book “How To Build Resilience”, originally published Aug 2020. I’m currently updating the title to include revised chapters, new bonus chapters and additional resources for resilience building. Version 2 of “How To Build Resilience” will be available to all paying supporters of Sunday Letters for free in digital download epub, Mobi, and PDF format. The print version will be available on Amazon. You can get your free copy of the book by becoming a patron of The Sunday Letters Journal.

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Rather than resilience being the psychological means to withstand difficult conditions, it is the ability to get back on our feet after those conditions cause us a setback. It is not the ability to remain unaffected by negativity and trauma. Instead, resilience is the mental strength needed to cope and manage the difficulties of life. And thankfully, just like a muscle, we can train and develop its strength.

Our thoughts about ourselves, abilities, confidence, self-efficacy, and our place in the world can often be buffered by circumstance, and depending on the habit of thought we have developed, these conditions can keep us down. We might perform well in one area of life, such as work, and less well in relationships, for example. Or we may experience challenges across the full spectrum of life. We may look at others who represent all that is successful to us and lament our lack of progress. One thing leads to another, and momentum in a negative direction takes hold. We examine our lives and decide that it is one enormous failure.

I regard myself as resilient. I can deal with challenges, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel them and even break down. Just as you are likely to have had bad times in life, so too have I. When I reflect on the events of my life in relationships and work, for example, they hold two of the most difficult series of experiences. I just wished they hadn’t happened at the time, but today I am grateful because I would not be who I am without them. Personal resilience is the reason people who experience negative life events get back on the horse. They make this choice because they have built personal strength over time rather than some unique, innate gift.

If life has pushed you around to the point where you see little hope, you can do something about it. You can begin to turn things around and build resilience in yourself too, but it takes work. These four ways to build resilience are just a few tools you can use.

Get in touch if you need help using these tools or feel overwhelmed.

1. Develop Positive Automatic Thinking

The content of our thoughts strongly influences our emotional state. The thought “I am bad at my job” will eventually result in feelings of worthlessness, disempowerment and lack of motivation. It's not the only factor at play, however, research seems to indicate that altering our thought patterns on a given topic or domain of life may positively alter our emotional state. Research and practice in Cognitive-behaviour Therapy (CBT) tell us that the thought “I am poor at my job” is a negative automatic thought (AT) and is the product of momentum and habit of thought.

Automatic Thoughts (ATs) are negative thoughts occurring spontaneously when we find ourselves in challenging situations. They are judgmental and critical toward us and typically reflect our core beliefs about ourselves and the world in which we live. In contrast, positive Automatic Thoughts, or thoughts of a coping nature, create personal affect (feeling) and are strength-forming declarations. According to McKay & West (2016)1, they promote resiliency and shift our perspective, helping us effectively navigate difficult emotions and their associated conditions.

Coping thoughts help us think and feel differently about difficult situations. This method of resilience building helps you learn about your negative ATs and replace them with helpful coping thoughts. However, they must be believable. Lying to oneself doesn't work.

Step One: Replace automatic thoughts

Bring to mind a situation that often causes you stress and negative emotion. Write down the situation and how you feel about it.

Example Situation: My manager is angry with me. Automatic thought: I am poor at my job. Coping thought: This is typical behaviour of my boss and has nothing to do with my skills or ability.

Step Two: Guided exposure.

Step two usually occurs with the assistance of a coach or therapist trained to help clients on a one-to-one basis in the safety of a controlled environment. Here the practitioner will guide you through the negative experience, asking you to reconnect with the emotion. Now instead of the automatic negative thought, they'll ask you to choose an alternative but believable coping thought.

Does the associated emotion shift? Do you feel a certain release? Does it feel like you are lying to yourself?

If the alternative thought is not believable to you, then the gap between where you are and where you wish to be is too far. Like the rungs on a ladder that are spaced too far apart, you cannot climb to a higher emotional place. So instead, take a step back and consider something less dramatic or emotionally loaded, something closer to where you are and more believable. What’s the smallest step in the right direction that you can take?

Step Three: write down this coping thought.

The critical automatic thought beats us up for making a mistake. It doesn't allow us to try new things or take a chance on a good idea. Our creative energies are literally quashed before they have a chance. As such, we find ourselves on guard in case we step out of line. It is fear-based, and nothing can grow there.

The coping thought, on the other hand, lets us off the hook. It's like a good friend that looks out for our best interests, puts their arm around our shoulder, and tells us everything is ok. The coping thought allows the situation to exist but takes away the guilt and personal responsibility. The associated soothing effect of the coping thought is evidence of the impact our thoughts can have on our feelings.

Now, write this coping thought, or mantra, down on a card and keep it close. Practice it often when conditions are good rather than waiting for a challenge to arise. When a difficult situation arises, you will have the means to manage your emotional state. Your resilience will grow when you practice this new response and allow that to be your dominant thought and feeling.

2. Adopt A Growth Mindset

I'm not one to take criticism very well—that’s my biggest personal challenge. Nobody likes criticism, especially when it is uninvited. Feedback from a mentor or an otherwise invested other is different from that of somebody piping up out of the blue. Nonetheless, how we respond short- and long-term to criticism is a measure of our resilience.

Research by Gordon Atlas (1994)2 on sensitivity to criticism found that high sensitivity to criticism is related to high levels of neuroticism, depression, fear of negative evaluation, pessimism, and low levels of self-esteem. Atlas suggested that oversensitivity to criticism hinders our ability to adapt and respond to criticism, even when it is constructive and of helpful intent. Building resilience requires us to take a long hard look at ourselves in a non-judgmental way. It is the ability to examine our responses to conditions without taking feedback personally. After all, how we see ourselves is not how others see us.

Step One: Consider recent criticism you received

Think about two or three recent situations where you felt unfair criticism. This can be work, home, or leisure activity related. Write down the detail of these incidents; where it was and what you were doing, who was involved, how you were criticised, and how it made you feel.

What were the consequences or outcomes for you and others involved?

Step Two: Reframe the experiences

Now, consider how these situations may be helpful to you. How might you reframe them so that they are to your advantage? How can you grow from this? Can you become stronger and more resilient from the experience?

Write down each alternative response.

Step Three: Short affirming statements

Write down three affirming statements in your journal or notebook that you can use when you find yourself under the weight of criticism or verbal abashment.

For example, This person's critical reaction to me does not reflect my ability. I have proven my ability time and again. Or, My work will not be to everyone's taste. I can't please everyone all the time and don't need to either. I continue to do my best regardless.

Step Four: Additional strategies

Firstly, your reaction may not be an overreaction. What matters is the level of the emotional impact the other's criticism has had on you. As mentioned earlier, feeling aggrieved is normal and may pass. But if the feelings last and affect your ability to continue your work normally, if you feel fearful and withdrawn, then you may need to employ this strategy until you witness a shift in your mindset. Also, seek affirmation from those you know who support you or that have acknowledged your good work in the past.

Additional strategies for building resilience may include;

1. Practice self-compassion. Acknowledge that things are tough, but soothe yourself instead of criticising yourself. Imagine what you would say to a friend or loved one in a similar situation.

2. Don’t take what they say personally. Instead of their words being a personal attack, consider their interpretation may be flawed.

3. Notice the automatic negative thought that rises in you in the face of criticism and counter it with its opposite.

4. Repeat to yourself soothing statements such as: “I am seeking improvement, not approval” and “This result is not perfect, but I'm learning and getting better.”

5. Reflect on the feedback you have received and where you honestly feel it's inaccurate, speak up and offer a reason why you were right.

6. Take time out. Under negative emotions, we usually become defensive. If you feel hurt and feel the need to snap back, take some time to calm yourself and rethink your response.

7. Practice positive self-talk such as, “I did the best I could,” “my intentions were right,” “Perfection is impossible, but I'm improving,” and “everyone mistakes sometimes; that's how we learn.”

8. Refrain from offering thanks for unwelcome feedback. You're not obliged to be disingenuously positive under the weight of abuse. Ignore it, walk away, and find the company of those who appreciate you.

A Word of Caution: Avoid using these strategies to reinforce an unwillingness to improve and grow. It’s often easier to stay in a safe place and defend it than to step outside our comfort zone. Embrace change and learn to develop new skills.

3. Identify Emotional Avoidance Strategies

Emotional avoidance strategies are both behavioural and cognitive. Emotional avoidance is when we engage in behaviour designed to avoid experiencing powerful and unwanted emotions. Some behavioural strategies are more obvious than others, such as when a person with social anxiety declines an invitation to a social gathering to avoid distress. But we also do less obvious things such as avoiding eye contact or making an excuse to leave friendly company early.

Cognitive avoidance strategies include avoiding thinking about, remembering, or paying attention to an emotionally distressing thought. These include distraction (watching television, obsessive social media usage), rumination (repetitively going over a thought or a problem without resolution), or forcing ourselves to think of something other than the situation at hand. Emotional avoidance prevents us from realising that there is no danger. Avoidance strategies might seem to help us in the short term, however, long term, they do not serve our best interest.

Avoiding emotions (as well as other private events such as thoughts, urges, memories, and so on) is considered one of the most pathological processes we can develop. The deliberate attempt to avoid or escape difficult emotions can paradoxically increase their occurrence and intensity and diminish the effect of exposure-based strategies. Research by Steven C. Hayes has revealed that emotional avoidance predicts negative outcomes in depression, substance abuse, binge eating, and many other areas (Hayes, 2004)3.

If you find yourself engaging in emotional avoidance, here is how you may begin to untangle yourself from these unhelpful strategies.

Step One: Understand what emotional avoidance looks like

There are many mind games or techniques we use not to feel strong and unpleasant emotions, many of which play out unconsciously. Understanding what these look like is the first step in learning how to address our problems.

Here are some examples;

• Binge watching television

• Spending hours playing video games

• Endlessly scrolling social media

• Excessive alcohol intake

• Smoking

• Isolating ourselves from friends and family

• Over-exercising

• Excessive worry over things you can’t control

• Prescription of illegal drug use

• Self-harming

• Running from difficult conversations

• Lying about how you feel

• Skipping work or school

• Staying in bed

• Excessive shopping

• Binge eating

Step Two: Reflect on your avoidance strategies

Recall three situations in your life where you avoided a difficult or painful emotion or situation. They can be work-related or personal or in any other area of your life where events were hurtful, damaging or related to loss of some kind.

Now, considering each situation, write down your answers to the following questions;

1. What emotions were bought up for you?

2. How do you prevent yourself from feeling these emotions?

3. How effective were you in not feeling these emotions?

Step Three: Evaluate Your Responses

Finally, it is time to evaluate each situation either privately or with your coach or therapist. Consider the following questions.

• What was this exercise like for you?

• Can you see patterns in the emotional avoidance strategies you tend to employ? For instance, do you usually distract yourself or frequently turn to food, alcohol, drugs or even exercise to cope?

• For each of the three situations, reflect on how you could have responded differently and in a more helpful way. How might the outcome have been different for you?

• What insights have occurred to you, and what can you take away from this exercise?

• What was easy or difficult about the exercise?

4. Allow Yourself To Fail

According to David Scott Yeager & Carol Dweck (2012)4, a growth mindset represents the idea that our most basic abilities can be developed and that personal qualities like intellect and natural talent are merely the foundation. Dweck says that holding this view helps us build resilience leading to accomplishment and success.

A growth mindset accepts failure. It understands that failure is part of life's process and allows us to make mistakes yet persist despite our discomfort. However, growth doesn't happen within the comfort zone, that space where everything is familiar, easy, and under our control. In order to learn and grow, we must be prepared to go beyond the comfort of our existing abilities and knowledge.

This visual tool, created by Hugo Alberts Phd and Lucinda Poole PsyD, was designed to help you understand the concept of moving from your comfort and experiencing growth.

Step One: Understanding The Comfort Zone

The Comfort Zone

Take a look at the comfort zone infographic above. The dark brown circle represents our comfort zone—the space where we feel things are within our control. Things are easy for us here, and we know what to expect. However, no growth or expansion takes place in the comfort zone because the patterns of thought and behaviour are repetitive and predictable.

The Fear Zone

The area immediately beyond the comfort zone is the fear zone. To learn new things we must leave our comfort zone and enter the discomfort of the fear zone. Here, we have no previous experiences to guide us, so we tend to avoid it and make excuses for why we shouldn't go. We usually retreat as fast as possible if we find ourselves there by chance. As such, the fear zone is often the most challenging part of learning.

The Learning Zone

If our resilience is sufficient, we may enter the learning zone. This is where we begin to develop new skills, cope with challenges and find answers to problems. Consequently, as we become familiar with new conditions, we extend our comfort zone perimeter and begin to feel comfortable in the new experience.

The Growth Zone

The growth zone is that psychological space where we begin to experience redefining change. The learning zone experience helps us to grow as a person, increase resilience, conquer obstacles, and create a route towards our goals. The growth zone experience is the ultimate reward for feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It represents what Maslow referred to as Peak Experience5.

Step Two: An Example of Moving through the zones

I remember the first time I faced the prospect of speaking in a room full of strangers–it was terrifying. I begged my companion not to ask me to speak, and thankfully, on that occasion, I escaped the imagined humiliation. But sooner or later, I had to face that demon. The process was gradual, and it eventually became easier. It's still a challenge today, however, but far less daunting than before.

So let's consider the man with a fear of speaking to a group at work or a small gathering such as a wedding. He has an almost pathological fear of public speaking and often considers how he might avoid these situations altogether. As such, he does so successfully but never gets to experience the associated growth.

An event at work comes up where he can no longer defer his fear. He is cornered and is now forced to face it. He is possessed by self-doubt, anxiety and stress–he is about to enter the fear zone. However, he may enter the learning zone by taking on his fear. He is learning new skills, and once he persists, he will reduce the severity of his symptoms and negative thinking, eventually expanding his comfort zone.

Now, this example is all very simplistic and perhaps sterile, but it is no less reflective of a possible series of events. If this man had stayed in his comfort zone, hemmed in by his fear, growth and development would not have been possible.

Step Three: A comfort zone situation

Think about your life, work and relationships, hobbies you've been putting on the long finger, or family problems you're avoiding. Is there something keeping you in your comfort zone?

Write out the details of your situation.

Step Four: Identifying Fears

What does your fear look like? What's going on in your body? What are the thoughts that cross your mind? What is your mental conversation? Remember, nobody's watching or judging you. You're in a safe place where no one can hear or see you.

Write down your fears.

Step Five: Identifying learning opportunities

Now, what are the opportunities you're missing out on? Are you missing promotions at work? Denying yourself a loving partnership? Are you avoiding the work you'd really love to do?

List the biggest opportunities you're missing by allowing your imagined fear to dictate your life experience.

Step Six: Identifying your potential & Taking Action

Finally, consider how your career, business or personal life would expand and grow were you to step out of your comfort zone. Allow yourself to play with it, to imagine what life would be like if nothing got in your way.

List the likely benefits of learning these new skills. These benefits must be compelling. They must weigh more than the potential for failure.

Now take the first step.

These four tools to help you build resilience may seem too difficult or even hard to understand and practice. That’s ok, there is no prescription for a happy and contented life and no manual for it either. Often, we need the help of someone who has already experienced what we are desperately trying to avoid. If this is you, get in touch if you need help using these tools.

Get Help Applying These Tools

References

Goal setting is trendy, and you’ll find very few voices in business and management circles offering counter ideas or alternatives for the achievement of success. The acronym S.M.A.R.T. makes you want to make it yours—makes you want to be smart. So if you’re smart, you’ll set goals for your life and work. Goal setting is the starting point for all worldly achievement and material gain, powerfully driving behaviour and boosting performance in a competitive world. We don’t doubt its theoretical foundation or its efficacy in achieving personal success in life. It is ingrained in the western industrialised mind, pervasive and unquestioned in business & management literature and the popular press. But it has a dark side, and in its pursuit, we often become blinkered to its negative consequences and lose sight of important aspects of life and work.

There was a period in my life when I, like countless others, believed that setting lofty goals was the route to success. As with a doctor’s prescription, I merely needed to do exactly what I was told to realise my vision for the future. But none of it worked.

Read more

My daughter was swimming Saturday morning, and I was spectating. A forty-minute period where ideas have a chance to propagate in my mind without interference and distraction. It’s like waiting for a bus or any other situation where there’s nothing we can do about it but be patient. I find that I’m conducting mental acrobatics with things I “need” to do at most other times.

So I took the opportunity to clarify for myself what I mean when I say, "command your own work." If there is a central message in all that I write, it is that. It is an attempt to convince you not only of its importance but its imperative for personal growth, development and psychological health.

So, I opened the Peak app on my phone and began to write. Then disaster struck. I received a phone call, answered it, and lost my draft.

I couldn’t believe it. I was in the flow, and then the product was disappeared. Inside I was raging. But what could I do?

Now, several hours later, I'm attempting to reach back into my thoughts, reconnect with the state in which I found myself and retrieve that which was so clear and concise at the time.

So here goes.

What "Command Your Own Work" Means

The central tenet of the message "command your own work" is that in order to find true meaning and purpose in life and be happy, healthy, engaged, and fulfilled, you must work from a place of intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic. This seems obvious and straightforward, which it is, but it requires clarification.

When you control your own work, you work not because you are carrying out the commands of an apparent superior, adopting an ideal worker image, following a social or cultural imperative, fulfilling some moral obligation, listening to the echo of your mother or father in your head, or indeed, meeting financial obligations. Instead, you move and act from a position of interest, curiosity, and personal autonomy. It is want to do rather than must do, and it seems to me at least that the older we get, the more obvious this is.

All forms of motivation that originate outside the self are imposed —they demand your conformity. And you comply whether you realise it or not. However, better to be bound by one's curiosity and interest than by the needs and wants of others. And, indeed, of soulless corporate bodies. But this is easier said than done. Our hegemonic common sense about it suggests that this is simply the way it is and how it has always been. How can it be any different?

Sunday Letters

Work & Our Hegemonic Common Sense About It

Let’s start with a quote. “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs b…

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4 years ago · 1 like · Larry G. Maguire

The modern workplace and, indeed, the workplace of the past one hundred and fifty years or more, was and remains an assault on the freedom and integrity of human beings. It seems like an over-the-top statement. Ok, but don't take my word for it, read Chomsky on the matter for example. He suggests that when we work, we effectively rent our bodies and minds to others who profit from it. It’s a Marxist idea, and as much as neoliberal propaganda shits all over the socialist ideas of Karl Marx, there is a fundamental truth to it. The fact that we (in the Northern Hemisphere) enjoy a comfortable life resulting from our engagement in the Capitalist system does not undermine the truth of Marxist philosophy. The few control the minds, behaviours, and purses of the many. In fact, most people just about get by. Although conditions are markedly improved from our grandparents' time, a prison is a prison regardless of how plush it looks and feels.

The Work-Life Balance Spoof

Anxiety and depression are never too far away, and the answer to the inherent problem of contemporary work? You’ve got to find a balance between work and life. Today, the neoliberal machine speaks of work-life balance as if life and work are separate realms of existence—but they are not. Whether you receive payment or not, whether you regard it as work, a pastime or otherwise, you take yourself with you and what you do as work is as much a part of your life as any other activity.

There is no separation,; all attempts to convince you of such are merely smoke and mirrors. The concept of work-life balance is constructed by those who wish to maintain the status quo. Indeed, many of my peers and compatriots in work psychology who are, it must be said, in the pockets of the corporate machine, promote this idea in the misled belief that they are doing good.

But they are not.

Maybe they don’t believe it but they hard-sell it nonetheless.

This message is merely the means by which we maintain the restriction on our minds, bodies, and creative output. The modern workplace might have foosball tables, free coffee, lunches, and haircuts, but these things are designed to mask the inherent problem with contemporary work—they want your energy, time, and commitment and they are not good for human beings long term. We are living, breathing organisms placing ourselves in fake plastic environments that demand our conformity...how could we possibly be healthy under these conditions!

We might become assimilated and adopt the ideas, concepts, rules and demands of work as our own (self-determination theory calls this process external, introjected, identified, and integrated forms of motivation. They originate from extrinsic demands and are not the same as intrinsically derived motivation) but they are not our own. We are, as such, complicit in our own imprisonment.

According to researchers Judge and Watanabe in a study of job and life satisfaction (1993), work and life are "significantly, positively, and mutually related". In other words, when people report their satisfaction with work and life as separate constructs, they are inseparable. Work and life are the same, and work-life balance is a nonsense concept.

How Things Change

There must be discomfort enough to make current working conditions unbearable for our work situation to change. In contrast, comfort makes us soft and vulnerable, and organisations understand this impeccably. When the time comes, they cut the workforce, give us a cheque and say thanks but no thanks. We are no longer of use, and like an aged piece of equipment, we're retired. We spend the best years of our lives investing ourselves in work under the command of others, forging meaning and purpose, and then without any say in the matter, they take it away.

Working conditions and the bright and shiny aspects of it are designed to appeal to our comfort and safety needs. But the contemporary workplace is not safe despite their pandering to our desire for it.

So bottom line...

Realising and accepting that we are entitled to better, that work should not be a means to an end, opens our eyes to the possibility of something else. This something else is taking command of our own work. Feeling our sense of autonomy, deciding for ourselves how our working lives should look, setting out to do work that commands our interest and curiosity...

This way of living and working is not beyond us. We don't have to work on command. We can take back that choice and finally do work that we decide is worth doing, for its own sake, and even make a decent living from it.

Think about it.

Hungarian psychologist László Polgár made quite a unique marriage proposal to his long-distance girlfriend Klara, a language teacher from Ukraine. During their early courtship, he wrote to Klara telling her that using his education and training methods, he could turn any child from any background into a genius in any domain of expertise. But there was only one problem… he had no children of his own to test it out. He needed someone willing enough to marry him, have children, and then dedicate their lives to proving his theory correct.

So he asked Klara to marry him and she agreed.

They married and moved to Hungary where they had three daughters and considered what domain of activity they could train their children. They discussed languages, mathematics, and several other fields but settled on chess–a male-dominated field—which perhaps made their task all the more challenging. Regardless, they immediately began to execute their plan to mould their children into world-class players.

Before he met Klara, László wrote a book titled Bring Up Genius (Nevelj Zsenit!)1, where he outlined his theories based on his study of hundreds of creative geniuses such as Einstien and Socrates. He says in the book, “Genius equals work and fortunate circumstances…geniuses are made, not born” and was convinced of the legitimacy of his hypothesis. So with their method, equipment, materials and subjects in place, László and Klara set out on their lifelong task.

“When I looked at the life stories of geniuses I found the same thing….they all started at a very young age and studied intensively”

— László Polgár

The Polgárs commenced their experiment in the late 1960s under the premise that any healthy child can become a genius in any field of sport, science or the arts, as long as their education begins around the age of three and they start to specialise at age six. But their work was seen as controversial, and they were met with resistance from neighbours and education authorities.

People said they were destroying their children and the Polgárs had to battle to win the right to homeschool their three girls. However, they persevered, and from their small Budapest apartment cluttered with chess-related material, Zsuzsa, Sofia and Judit underwent their tuition in spite of opposition. In fact, it may have been that very opposition which brought them closer together and reinforced the girls’ learning.

Men had dominated the world of chess for centuries, but the Polgár girls were about to change things. In 1973 at age four, Zsuzsa won her first competition and by age fifteen was ranked one of the top women chess players in the world. Later she became the first woman to be awarded the title of Grandmaster via the same path that all previous male awardees are required to take.

Third daughter Judit, became a Grandmaster at age fifteen making her the youngest person ever to be awarded the accolade. The middle girl, Sofia, although gaining enough points to secure the award, was never granted Grandmaster status which some suggested was for political reasons. However, her achievements were nonetheless impressive, having been ranked sixth best female chess player in the world.

László and Klara Polgár’s experiment was by all external measures a success. Although, it might be suggested at what cost to their three girls? Reports from the girls in subsequent years suggest that their learning and practice were fun. They say they were curious about chess and chose to play it — they were never forced. And they spoke of a “very special atmosphere” in their home.

The level of the girls’ immersion in the game was intense. Apparently, once late at night, László found his daughter Sophia in the bathroom with a chessboard on her knees. He told her to leave the pieces alone and go back to bed. She apparently replied, “Daddy, they won’t leave me alone”. She and her sisters had become committed and obsessed with the game.

“In the beginning, it was a game. Later, chess for me became a sport, an art, a science, everything together. I was very focused on chess and happy with that world. I was not the rebelling and going out type. I was happy that at home we were a closed circle and then we went out playing chess and saw the world.”

— Judit Polgár

The Three Stages of Creative Genius

In his 2017 book Peek; how all of us can achieve extraordinary things2 the late Anders Ericsson explains that Zsuzsa, Sofia and Judit took a path that all high performing creative geniuses appear to travel. He says that an expert’s development passes through three stages from the onset of curiosity to fully-fledged creative genius. Typically, he says, the process begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues for at least ten years until the child reaches elite-level expertise.

In a relentless pursuit of perfection and answers to burning questions, the expert keeps pushing the boundary of their abilities. Eventually, they break not only their personal limits but also the limits of the domain and bring to the world a unique and eminent contribution. This aligns with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow,3 and according to Ericsson, there are three stages of the creation of a genius.

Stage 1: Curiosity

In the early stages of human development, a child is driven by curiosity. Or perhaps drawn by curiosity, would be a better way to phrase it because curiosity feels like a vacuum into which we are being taken rather than being driven or pushed. The child wants to investigate everything. Their desire and motivation are intrinsic and objects in the world serve as a means of exploration. It was at this early stage that the Polgárs made a concerted effort to influence their children.

Zsuzsa Polgár explained in a magazine interview how she remembers her first interaction with chess. “Yes, he could have put us in any field, but it was I who chose chess as a four-year-old…. I liked the chessmen; they were toys for me. Later it was the logic that fascinated me, and the challenge”.

Ericsson says that at this stage, the parent plays a crucial role in the child’s development. By affording their child love, time, attention and encouragement, they steer the focus of the child’s interest. As time passes, the parent introduces the benefits of self-discipline, dedication and responsibility into the mix while maintaining the vital aspect of play.4 Reinforcement of the behaviour is then achieved through praise and reward. Reinforcement is also achieved through younger children’s observation of the older ones, a process known as vicarious learning.5

At some point in their progression, the child begins to form deeper connections with the game. For Zsuzsa, it was when the logical and strategic component took over from the broader play aspect. This is the point when the child moves on to stage two.

Stage 2: Becoming Serious

Ericsson says that in the years preceding adolescence, and after the child shows significant promise, they seek out a teacher or a coach and encounter deliberate practice6 for the first time. Play still forms part of the subjective experience, but deliberate execution and refinement of specific tasks become the focus.

The teachers don’t necessarily need to be expert performers themselves, according to Ericsson, they just need to be reasonably proficient. László Polgár wasn’t a brilliant chess player himself, and his daughters became much better than him very quickly. But he was, as Judit said once in an interview, “a great motivator and visionary”.

These attributes in the teacher are critical for the young student. Their teachers must possess the ability to actively coach and encourage their students to higher levels of skill development and performance. Ultimately though, the child’s motivation must be intrinsic. The study of human performance has shown that extrinsic motivation rarely endures, so to travel the long road to creative expertise, we must be self-motivated.

Learn more about self-determined motivation

We know that any kind of extended practice, Ericsson says, alters the brain’s neurological systems which leads to increased abilities in the skills practised. He wonders then if there is a neurological basis for effects on motivation and enjoyment. At present, it’s unclear. What we do know is that experts gain great pleasure from their work — they love to do it and are in command of it.

When I consider this, it seems to me that the person and the work at some stage become one entity. They somehow blend with the work and vibrate quite literally at the same frequency as the activity. Regarding those in peak experience, Maslow states in Toward A Psychology of Being7;

“The person in the peak-experience feels more integrated, unified, whole, all-of-a-piece, than at other times. He also looks to the observer more integrated, less split or dissociated”.

— Abraham Maslow

Stage 3: Making A Commitment

It is generally in the early teenage years that future geniuses decide to go all-in. They make a conscious decision to dedicate their lives to becoming the best that they can be. They commit, and all other activities not lending themselves to their expert development are dropped. The prodigy seeks out the best schools and tutors, and if required, even leaves for another country to access them.

Money helps — a lot. Training can be expensive with costs often reaching tens of thousands per year. Ericsson cites a 2014 article by Money Magazine which suggested $30,000 per year for a child to access elite tennis training. However, the creation of a genius doesn’t always need deep pockets. Parents with little money and generous support like the Polgárs, can make up the difference. In fact, plenty of money and no support will often lead the student nowhere.

Another critical aspect of the development of expertise in children is the harnessing of the momentum of growth in the body. If specific skills are not developed in youth, they rarely can be in later life. For example, for ballet dancers to acquire the specific ranges of motion for their performance, they must do so as children. Bones mature and joints solidify with age and developing the necessary ballet skills becomes impossible. Shoulders, hips, knees etc. can be sculpted towards particular ends, but it must be done early.

The momentum of brain development too must be harnessed early. Studies have shown that certain areas of the brain are more developed in artists than in non-artists. Musicians too have enlarged areas of the brain not seen in non-musicians. This is particularly so for musicians who began in early childhood. The research appears conclusive; if you want your child to excel, start them early.

It’s a delicate and important learning period for the child, and where the ambition is primarily with the parents, the child can suffer. Nevertheless, if a young and talented teen commits to perfecting their skill for the right reasons, and enlists the coaching of an equally committed tutor, then they may reach the heights of their field.

In Conclusion

Would you do what Polgár and his wife did so that your kids excel at a given discipline? Or was it that Polgár was utterly obsessed with chess and his theory and was prepared to go to extreme lengths to prove himself right?

I think what’s critical here is that the Polgár girls wanted to play chess — they weren’t dragged kicking and screaming to the chessboard. László and Klara created a playful and enjoyable atmosphere around the game. In the face of disagreeable external forces, they were even more unified in their purpose — it was them against the world.

Later, as the story goes, Polgár wanted to adopt three non-white children from a third world country to further prove his theory of genius accurate. He had financial backing from a billionaire businessman, but the plan never materialised. It seems that pressure from Klara and realising life was not only about chess, László decided not to proceed.

Reflecting on the Polgár story, I wonder about my intent for my kids. I consider my children’s future, how I might aid their happiness and success, and so on. I point them one way or the other, suggesting to them things that might interest them. I try to recognise where their interests lie and fuel that.

I cannot avoid influencing them, but ultimately, I want them to choose for themselves. They will have many elements vying for their attention and I want to help them focus. But it’s their life, and I want their curiosity to grow organically rather than through my design.

I can’t help but feel that Polgár pursued his own ambition through his children and that may be somewhat of a shadow on the whole affair. However, as noted above, the girls have said they chose chess and they seemed to have a good family life, so who am I to judge.

The Polgárs showed that given the range of variables that existed for them, their meagre surroundings and pressures to conform to normality, sculpting genius-level expertise in their children was possible. The ends justified the means.