Skip to main content

Seeking a more meaningful work-life!

Over the years, I have been pondering this very thought. I have been obsessed with having a more meaningful work-life. On average, an individual spends about 40 hours a week at work, about 2,000 hours a year. That's 1/3 of our lives dedicated to working. 


Many believe work is time wasted, and prefer to spend time on more passionate activities. Knowing this, I set out to find a more balanced answer. These were the few questions that raced in mind when I started this journey:

  • How can we turn work into a more passionate endeavour? 
  • Why do a few people love work while the rest of us hate it?
  • Does a more meaningful work-life lead to a better life altogether?

With these questions in mind, I set off my journey. I spoke to countless leaders, read(more like listening to audiobooks), listen to podcasts and watch Youtube videos. After numerous months and years invested on this topic, I found a couple of commonalities:



1. It's a choice we make to either have a more meaningful work-life or not have it. 

For many, they see work as a means to an end; nothing more, nothing less. If that's your world view then work is more of "I'm obligated to do it" instead of "I want to do it". These people will preferably take a higher paid job at the expense of happiness. When analyzing multiple polls on people's top reasons for choosing a career, a higher-paid was its primary reason. Hence, why see the majority of us hate our job. Those who love it are often paid less at the start, due to passion and love for their job they will overshadow the rest of us, over time. 


2. We need to understand ourselves well enough to determine what is meaningful to us. 

Most people join the workforce either because they were forced by their parents or had to because of financial constraints. It's hard for them to explore what they truly love to do; hence why many are stuck with a dull, dead-end job. A caveat here, for some, these jobs, are more meaningful but for most of us, it's not. Despite your circumstances, please do not let them stop you from finding your dream job. It's never too late. Some may have found it at 21 while others at 65; referring to Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, and Harland David Sanders, founder of KFC. Hence, I would urge everyone to start the process of finding a meaningful work-life. One effective way is to learn about the journey of people you admire. You will be surprised to see how humbling and relevant it was. 


3. Love the process, not the destination. 

When observing people who had dead-end careers, I found most of them were focused on the rewards and not enjoying the journey. As the saying goes, "The reward is in the journey" and rings valid till today. Chasing something you can't control is a dangerous place to be. For example, imagine you set yourself a goal to earn a million dollars in the next year; sounds good, right? And in that year, you missed birthday parties, family gathering and you worked 15 hours days. You were determined to achieve your goal at all cause. After all that, a year has come and plot twist, you fall short. Now ask yourself, if you were in this position, how do you feel? 


I would be pissed, demotivated, and frankly pretty frustrated. I sacrifice so much to fail. But if you think of it, why should I be pissed on something I can't control. I can't control if I earn a million dollars, I can't even control if I will wake up the next day. It's not the right mindset to have. It would be better if I still have the goal but concentrated on the process, i.e. the journey itself. Rather than being fixated on the destination, I would focus my time and energy on doing work that I love. This mindset shift will help us care more about our work itself instead of outcomes we don't control whatsoever. Hence, you will start making decisions based on a more passionated process instead of the quickest route to your goals which in the long run more sustainable, more meaningful, and ultimate just more rewarding. 



To those who feel that their work-life can be more meaningful, there is no better time to start than the present. I wish everyone a more meaningful work-life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Horror Narrative

So since I am making a horror game, I need to know what kind of narrative I should right. One of my previous post, I wrote about "What is Horror" which covers many of this. Now I would to dive deeper into this. Certain design choices made before production due to time and resources constraint. First Person Point of View No Dialog One repeatable Level [Check My Previous post for the layout] Its an Horror Game One Ghost / Young Girl Lack of Props  This means, I have to design Narrative through Visual Means, I cannot take the easy way out of dialog and words. I have to show Emotion and Story through Color, Layout, Lighting, Atmosphere and Sound. So before I start, I would like to share the common Problems for the Horror Genre. 3 Reasons Why Today's Horror Films Are Just Not Scary Anymore Usually people who make horror focuses on JUMP SCARES. Well this is not good. As when the scare is done, it feel the viewers with immediate relief which may spoil the hor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adding the Disclaimer

The original idea for the disclaimer is to be a classic Disclaimer. Example can be seen below. At minute 7.17 can see the example Link for the video at 7.17 However, Andrew has prepared the video before seeing my comment and his approach works much better so we ticked with it. The sources for the disclaimer. First I found a template from this website.  Template THE DISCLAIMER Here is a standard motion picture disclaimer... "PERSON'S NAME OR PRODUCTION COMPANY" is the author of this motion picture for the purpose of copyrght and other laws. This motion picture is protected pursuant to the provisions of the laws of the United States of America and other countries. Any unauthorized duplication, distribution and/or exhibition of this motion picture may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution. Characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, and any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental...
Post a Comment
Read more

What it takes to make a Title & Credit Screen

Finding the best way to present a title and credits screen. The solution should be simple and elegant as must not get in the way in the creative process of the telling the story. Title Screen Should be done in a way to sell the idea of story or more importantly establish the mood, feel and pace of the story. Eg. Credit Screen I Credit screen as 2 things. There is one version where it is to allow the audience to absorb the story and its conclusion. An epic story that is told beautifully takes a good amount time to comprehend and swallow. Eg. After watching this 2 video above we can see that we need a few amount of time to stretch and realign ourself as our epic journey with the story comes to end. Therefore, playing the screen credits will allow us to recover from experience. There a credit screen's where audiences wants to find out what will happen now. After the story is over, the character got what he wanted all is well, we still want to see what happen to rest a...
Post a Comment
Read more