Back in 2020, while in the middle of a lengthy renovation of our front garden, I wrote a post about monotonous work.
I found myself thinking about that again today.
You see, in the kind of work that I do (professional services/management consultancy), sometimes I finish a day’s work and wonder what I have actually achieved. This thought was particularly prevalent when I worked for a large consultant, with all of the time sucking emails, meetings and Microsoft Teams chat. While this is less of a problem since I have worked for myself (and I do really like what I do), nevertheless tangible progress does sometimes seem painfully slow.
Today I did a couple of simple tasks: I mopped the floor and washed my car. Simple tasks yes, but both of which delivered an immediate positive impact. But then I began to think that it’s jobs like this that we really undervalue as a society. We assign low status to them and sometimes outsource each to the cheapest possible provider. In the world’s eye’s value and status of work always increases the higher in an organisation you climb. Coders are paid less than managers, are paid less than directors, are paid less than the CEO…and so on. And yet that’s also where employees become further and further divorced from the skills necessary to do the work that delights that company’s clients.
However, when the simple jobs build up or go undone, our lives are noticeably poorer. I thought for a moment how pleasant it would be to devote one’s life to simple work. Work which in turn makes life so much more enjoyable for other people. To end each day at work in the knowledge that I had made a noticeable positive impact in the world. To see things improving with every sweep of the mop, sponge or brush.
The problem of course with this fantasy is that, as society is now, we pay so little for simple jobs to be done that it would be very hard to enjoy a decent standard of living from doing them alone. Life is a bloody expensive place. We are forced to spend our time trying to earn more money so that we can enjoy more things, pay for more interesting experiences and maybe outsource those simple jobs to someone else.
It’s all a bit messed up and unfair really, when you think about it.
Like I said I enjoy the work I do for my clients. But there are other things that interest me as well. Maybe I’d like to write more, make interesting things and sell them, become a second-hand book or antique dealer. I am perhaps digressing from the idea of truly simple work, but each of these paths also represents a hard road to financial success. I think about these things a lot though.
And yet always they butt up against the age-old problem “How would I cover the mortgage and bills if that’s all that I got paid to do?” I know money doesn’t guarantee happiness, but it does provide security and also enables experiences which in turn bring us joy.
So what’s the answer? I’m afraid I don’t know yet other than to wonder whether life needs to become cheaper, or we should pay more people a higher amount for the work they do? To value many different kinds of work rather than solely the highest-paid, executive kinds of jobs?
I genuinely didn’t intend this post to start to read like an intro to The Communist Party Manifesto 2.0. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that the answer lies that way either. Maybe sometimes blog posts are there to ask questions as much as they are to answer them?
This is one of the big questions I keep exploring though and I will write more on the subject in the future.
Photo by Masjid Pogung Dalangan on Unsplash
That Richard Bloke 