When there's a whole world out there in which you could be doing fun stuff?

erm….. fun stuff costs money (mostly)

I work to live.

Being in this office funds my (and my family's) lifestyle.

When it's boring it can be hard going, but I cheer myself up by looking forward to what I can do outside the office when I leave the office.

Currently i just get it done and dream of being a hippy on costa rica or somewhere nice with a small house and minimal belongings.

I think if I were designing furniture and products as opposed to buildings I'd enjoy work, or perhaps if I were designing buildings that looked different.

Yourself molgrips?

Working pays for me to be able to play out on my bike and go on holiday
No work
No money
No bike
No holidays

Sacrificed security, pensions and more money and instead chose freelancing, part-time hours and quality play time. Wouldn't switch back for anything.

Whilst there's a whole world of fun stuff, there's also a world where most of the people have f*ck all. I thank my lucky stars that by sheer fluke I was born in a country where the worst thing I have to do is go to work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

"cope" 🙄

It's a means to an end, that's all.

I'm a contractor, but it's 6months or a year (or 4 years) at a time.. and that definitely helps. I'd be suicidal otherwise 🙁

Woody – good point 😳

I ride to work, which is fun, then I do a job that is fun, working with interesting people on cool projects, then I ride back, which is also pretty fun! In my spare time, I do fun stuff with family, fun biking stuff etc.

Sometimes I have to hoover. That is pretty dull. Or wash up. That is worse, or tidy the garden. I don't mind cooking. Other than that sort of basic hygiene / human needs stuff, generally I enjoy most stuff I do.

Yes, I'm on way less pay than I could be, but we own (about 40% of) a nice house, in a lovely town with great riding on our doorstep, and I generally don't work ridiculous hours*, so I get to see the kid which is nice.

If I had my old job, I'd probably live in a bigger house than I needed, or have massive savings, but it would suck in comparison.

Joe
*with the exception of tomorrow's 06.30 – 19:15 day, but these are pretty rare.

We live in a society where, unfortunately, money is an essential part of living a life. I work so that I can live. Work gives me money (call it a bride if you would) to do my job and, using that money, I pay for things that make my existence outside these four walls bearable and/or enjoyable.

That recently included a new bike, although i have recently found out that, contrary to what I was told by someone in finance, we might be considering the cycle to work scheme. So, that could be a proper commuter bike for me in the next few months then. Nice.

I ride to and from work, which is great.

I only do 4 days per week anyway.

I try to give as much as possible to my job, so I get personal satisfaction from it. More often than not, my work is interesting. I have very little real responsibility yet earn not bad money.

I like most of my colleagues. My managers are all great.

It pays for lovely shiny bikes, dog insurance/food/medicine/toys etc, my car, red wine, Jack Daniels.

We have nine different kinds of tea, eight different kinds of coffee, plus hot chocolate, all free, all day. All kinds of benefits, nice warm office to sit in, allowed to use the internet and email. Cope? Gods, it could be so much worse!

one of my colleagues put it quite elegantly for me …

"terry – work is just something you do to fill up time when your resting from cycling isnt it "

– after id described my weekends activitys of cycling 500k and sleeping in a ditch (near urban bivy)

Riding to and from work for me was nothing but a chore. No excitement or interest.

I can't get any personal satisfaction from this job as any possibility of success is completely crippled.

But yes, you are all right insofar as I am lucky to be in a job in a recession and not be fighting for survival. Very much so.

Can you not vary your route to work to get some jumps in, or a bit of nice swoopy track? Something to get a smile on your face before you get to the office, or after you leave?

If I could, believe me I would already have done so!

Try throwing yourself into your job. Put everything into it, for its own sake, rather than for the prospect of promotion. I found it remarkably satisfying.

Where do you work?

a blowjob from the temp receptionist breaks up the morning
pub for lunch destroys the afternoon

I work on a project on which it is extremely difficult to achieve anything because of the way it's being run. I am not in a position to improve it either.

Hence throwing myself into work is not really an option.. 🙁

Am I the only person here that actually enjoys my job?

i enjoy most aspects of my job, the income will pay for things I want to do, i work part-time, but hate some of the human detritus i have to work alongside

Am I the only person here that actually enjoys my job?

i imagine your job becomes very un-enjoyable when you realise your engines on fire!!

Keep treading water mate, I feel dead guilty about complaining about my job when fundamentally I'm trying to make the world a better place (well my city anyway) and make double my sallary at my last job.

I'm still skint as I went from renting to owning and feel very frustarted at new managment systems and ConDem cuts, not to mention the lack of £s to spend on… well anything at all really.

However I intend to live a lot longer than my 31 years so far and as such know that this is just a blip and one day I'll look back and laugh.

That's what keeps me going. 🙂

I enjoy my job, but I'd still rather be doing other stuff. That's never going to change, and that's why I shrunk my hours.

Head down, get in get out. My job is dull dull dull but I'm out at 4 / 430 and weekends to do whatever.

But yeah, there's tonnes of places and things out there I'd rather be doing.

I have a job I enjoy doing. I don't have to cope with it.

Love my job. Paid to do stuff I enjoy, work with some great people, get paid to go out and do stuff, and good holidays. Pay and pensions not bad either.

I think if I were designing furniture and products as opposed to buildings I'd enjoy work, or perhaps if I were designing buildings that looked different

Get real, if you were designing furniture you'd wish you were designing buildings. If you were designing individual buildings you'd be annoyed at all the little details and the amount of time wasted thinking about the design and how nobody ever appreciates your ideas and how it takes so much longer than designing something standard but you never get any more credit for it; oh and wish you were designing standard buildings!

People either enjoy work or they dont. Thoose who do would think there job rewarding even if it was just sticking on a dial on a radio in a massive factory. They'd be able to go on for hours about the different textures of the knob and who if you approached it from +/-0.1 degree you might not put it on so efficiently and that this would change the efficiency of the factory by up to 5% a year. Which also happens to be the profit margin of the product and how if they didnt do their job properly the whole factory would not be profitable and would close destroying the local economy and just plunging the world economy over the edge and how their job is the most important job in the world.

Unfortunately most of these people actually end up with a decent job and your forced to listen to them as if they really are somewhat important.

The rest of us would hate our job even if it was flying round the world partying all night and sleeping with a collection of the world most beautiful women. We'd still find something to complain about, oh no sorry I cant party/sleep with entire team of hot celebrity cheerleaders tonight, this work is really tiring me out, I just fancy a night in with a cup of tea and some hob nobs.

I'm resigning 🙂

things change when you have kids. before you do a bit of work and have a bit of spare time after and everything's grand.
with kids you don't have a spare second and begin to resent your job stealing your life. me and mrs turnip spend hours thinking of strategies for early retirement.
often the idea of selling everything and moving somewhere cheap and doing something lame (for me) like teaching english is muted but you need money for security, healthcare etc etc and no where is really cheap now.
i have resigned myself to being a wage slave at least for the time being and try to get out the door at work at least by 6 to have a bit of ownlife. will revisit when mortgage is paid (a couple of years unless the interest rates go crazy)

How do you cope with work?

Easy. I think back to last August when I was made redundant, out of the blue, after 14 years. I remember how upset my wife and daughter were. I then think about six months of sending off emails and letters only to hear nothing back. I remember signing on every two weeks and telling someone who's thoughts were obviously elsewhere how hard I'd been trying to find work.

Now I'm back in work I find I cope with it just fine thank you very much. Next time you are thinking of all the fun stuff and "struggling to cope", consider the alternative – it sucks.

I'm self employed and finish by dinner time most days, i spent 24 yrs working in factories thinking i had to earn top money, i now love my job and should have set up on my own earlier.

I feel really sad for my work mates i left behind..

People either enjoy work or they dont. Thoose who do would think there job rewarding even if it was just sticking on a dial on a radio in a massive factory. They'd be able to go on for hours about the different textures of the knob and who if you approached it from +/-0.1 degree you might not put it on so efficiently and that this would change the efficiency of the factory by up to 5% a year. Which also happens to be the profit margin of the product and how if they didnt do their job properly the whole factory would not be profitable and would close destroying the local economy and just plunging the world economy over the edge and how their job is the most important job in the world.

That's kind of what the (very popular in psychology) Flow book (this one) says.

It is kind of possibly right in some ways, although I'd say that one thing you find about people you meet who enjoy their jobs is that they have often followed weird career paths and moved around a lot to find them. I don't think it is purely that some people just enjoy doing anything, it is more than some people are more motivated or willing to take the risks required to find what it is that they will enjoy doing. As someone who has done things from cleaning to filming people riding rollercoasters, to writing audio processing software, I am 100% sure that some jobs are better and more rewarding than others by a long way. You can take pleasure in doing a cleaning job well, but to be honest, once you've done it fow a few weeks, there is very little optimisation possibility left, and it gets pretty tedious.

Joe

scu98rkr.. you have a point, to an extent…

I figured out a while ago that I was never going to enjoy a job I was likely to get, so I thought I'd become self employed and work for only some of the time.

Doing ok so far but spent far too much money. It only recently dawned on me that a high salary is not a high salary if you only work half the time…

Had some good jobs and some shocking ones, now run a company with my wife from home using a network of freelancers (and our own work). Loads of time with our little boy, plenty of flexibility. The downside is very little holiday time but we have a lot of fun at weekends/evening/mornings.

My motivation is our little one and buying silly toys as well as the aim to buy a house outright soonish. A comfortable lifestyle that has plenty of time for surfing, MTBing, running, etc.

Had a very long patch of cr4p jobs and wondering what to do – stick with it and you'll get there.

Mat – how old are you, if you don't mind me asking. Just wondering how long it took to get it all sorted for you.

I switch off when I'm at work and go in to robot mode, when I'm not mucking about and taking the mick out of anyone who seems to warrant it.
Also a notebook where I can write my thought and ideas in, as well as lists of what to do when I clock off.

Mol – 35 (just)

Took a lot of cr4p jobs (e.g.farm and building site labourer anyone?!!) to get here though and my very talented wife has a lot to do with things going well right now. It could end any time though – never ever going to be complacent.

How do you cope with work?

I drink.

My name's Steven, and I'm a workaholic.

I've had what would be considered grim jobs in the past, for nothing more than food/lodge, working with idiots and slackers. I was grateful to be given the chance to work. Now I'm in a job that I can meet and talk to the people I'm helping, and see the change I'm helping make in their lives. The money helps me do more things in my free-time, but I'm not doing this for the money. I do this because I LOVE WORKING.