On work, and having fun in the midst of it

Feb 5, 2022

Why work?

Perhaps the more obvious answer would be that we work to create value, and exchange that value for money, to acquire the value that others have created with their work. This all seems well and good, but why does it seem like many of us dislike work and are miserable in our work?

Why are so many of us stressed when we work? I'm certainly not immune to it — there's stress that I could be lettings others down, that I'm not doing a sufficiently good enough job, that my skills are no longer going to stay relevant to generate more and more value in the long run. There's stress from the identity tied to my work — if I'm no longer able to generate large and increasing amounts of value despite spending my time at this work, can I still call myself a designer? Am I able to continue teaching design craft? Who then, would I be? And then there's stress from the interactions with others at work: the competition over scarce resources to make our work more "valuable" to exchange for more… identity? money? Stress from being unable to influence someone to collaborate with me so that I generate more value… At the end of it all, is the value I'm generating as a design actually valuable at all? Does it have any meaning?

Does it necessarily have to be like this though? What are my core human needs being undermined, such that I have such responses? How could our work structures and systems be changed to overcome these, or is it a matter of the structures and systems? What role do I have as individuals to short-circuit these responses?

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Tiny note to self: Don't take things too seriously, and don't forget to have fun at work.¹