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Someone above I think quoted the line about "No one ever lies on their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time at the office". I guess that can never be proved (short of having a rather bad taste survey) but I strongly suspect it's the second best bit of advice you'll ever get ().
Pretty much everyone has said the same thing, and as you get older you realise the essential truth. Money does buy you happiness but only up to a point. Once you have enough to enjoy a reasonably comfortable lifestyle there's no point in spending long hours doing a job you hate. Much better to spend time with family, friends, your bike or whatever.
You get one shot at life and that's it. No second chances. Once it's gone it's gone. If you want to waste it being a sales director or a management consultant then fair enough, but don't complain when you look out your office window at all the people having fun in the fresh air.
And for those folk claiming to have "stressful jobs" well really. If you're a policeman, nurse, pizza chef or something useful like that then yes, but for the vast bulk of folk (including the job I did) the harsh reality is that your job really is of very little importance in the bigger scheme of things.
and the best bit of advice you'll ever get............never ask a starfish for directions.
The whole point of working is to buy you time to play. Do just enough of the first to have as much of the second as you need.
Success is not having to work and having as much time as you like to play.
When you're dead no one comes round to look at your headstone and say, "Oh, he was good worker and corporate slave".
My dad was obsessed with telling me to earn as much money as I could, but that's mainly because he grew up very poor and despite all the cliches about money not equalling happiness, it isn't very fun being potless either.
To the OP I'd say you are in a very good position, your own house sorted, which is the big factor facing a lot of young people, it sounds like you are not being challenged, in which case try to move up the ladder or find a challenging hobby out of work.
On behalf of all women in the workplace, diddums. At least you got a fair run at it.
"we have it worse, so your situation doesn't matter?
I'm pretty sure someone has it worse than you...
Does no-one on here actually enjoy their job?
I have well paid job, spend time away from home but get plenty of time off.
It can be very stressful at times. When in the thick of it, it can be exhausting. However, when we are successful the level of job satisfaction is immense.
I do intend to scale down my work in a few years, go self employed and only work a few months per year. However, I can't imagine not doing it anymore.
I have been in jobs I have hated and that feeling of dread about having to go back to work, is soul destroying. The reality for most of us, is that we have to spend a lot of time at work, so you really need to enjoy what you do.
Does no-one on here actually enjoy their job?
Yep, I do. I spent a lot of time when I'm not at work thinking about it as well (mainly working out solutions to problems). I get a huge amount of fulfilment from it and a large amount of my self worth is derived from it, which I realise is a big risk if I ever lose it...
I think people have hit the nail.on the head. I need that little bit more challenge in my role, which I can do with my eyes shut currerntly. It was an amazing feeling to start with but I do need that extra challenge. I love learning and need a challenge to motivate me. I'm going to have to book in a conversation with my manager in regards to learning and responsibilities etc.
Your post reminded me of this Alan Watts quote...
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
I can completely relate to the OP as many here probably do. If you go looking for something to make you feel successful you’ll probably end up feeling disappointed. I’ve found reading about philosophy has helped me overcome this vicious evolutionary programming.
Sometimes we don’t know what we’re looking for, because we already have it. Learn to appreciate all the simple things we have taken for granted.
Does no-one on here actually enjoy their job?
sometimes. it's pleasant enough. outside of work i spend 0 minutes per day thinking about it, i get 7 weeks a year holiday, there are some attractive women in the office and the work isn't difficult or stressful. i get paid close to the average wage, and i have no desire to be a high flyer so i basically just coast. it's fine.
Mrwhyte- A good way to learn stuff is to drop yourself in it,big time.
When we had our business, me and my partner were in a meeting with a potential customer who asked if we could do a fully animated website for them.
’Yes’ said I, full of shit, as ever.
We got the contract
”Well then, smartarse, you need to start learning how to do animation, don’t you?” Said my business partner, quite legitimately.
So I did
There was a lot of swearing. Along the lines of “why the **** has it just done that?!!”
Since then I bloody love doing animation. It makes me immensely happy and it’s multi-layered format suits my OCD nature. Would I have done it without chucking myself in at the deep end. Possibly. Maybe not (probably not!)
I don’t know who the quote came from originally, but...
”do something you love, then it never ever feels like work”
I absolutely bloody love my ‘job’!
Go and do something you fancy doing, and you think you’ll really love fella 😀
I am one of the small percentage of people who really enjoys their job. It really suits me. It's well paid and I get a lot of time off to enjoy the things in life that make me happy! Not a brag I promise but it took a long time for me to get to this position. What would I miss most of it all changed?? The time off for sure. So enjoy it while you have it buddy. Life is fleeting. Family and friends define your success in my opinion. Work just makes the cogs spin a little easier but it shouldn't be the main focus!
Amen to that!
I think this a cultural issue. Success is often equated with money and status in advertising, films, and tv shows. Sometimes it is an overt statement but if not it is instead illustrated by the way that charcters dress, the homes they live in, the cars they drive, the things they do and the places they visit - which are often way beyond the means of a real person with that job. These associations reinforce the myth that money and status equals success. Newspapers and magazines reinforce this these perceptions by glamourising the benefits of money and status.
It strikes me that thinking of success in these terms serves only to benefit shareholders and those above us in the organisation hierarchy as it encourages us to sacrifice our own happiness, time and health in pursuit of these fickle rewards, while the real profit from our endeavour is accrued by others. Got a promotion? Earning an extra £15k? Not happy? Then you need to work harder and earn more...and repeat...
The way out of this is, if there is one, is to first take responsibility for living and aspiring toward our own definition of success and happiness - one that serves us and our family. It is not easy to do because it goes against this prevailing culture and a lifetime of indoctrination that has shaped our thoughts and beliefs.
TL;DR OP - your life before was not a success on your terms, your new one is. I admire you for what you've done. Sounds to me like you are living the dream.
I worked for charities for years, doing all kinds of websites, digital marketing, databases etc
Got paid pretty well (no wife, kids or mortgage) but was really phoning it in tbh. Did good work, but not learning anything, no inspiration.
Ended up quitting and doing a full time MSc in Brewing and Distilling. Now, that was a challenge- post graduate science with no scientific studies since highers 20 years ago!
But it pushed me, and I surprised myself by responding well and working hard. Just graduated in top 5%, with an A grade.
Having no income other than AirBnB from my spare room sucked and has wiped my savings (already depleted after a divorce), but it's been a great learning experience. Makes a good answer for the "tell me more about yourself" interview question.
Not that I have a job yet, which is stressful in its own way. Loads of time, no money to do anything fun.... Thank god for cycling!
So, yeah.... Get divorced, give up everything and do something totally different and then be unemployed.
That'll sort ya
I enjoy my job- to a point. It’s interesting, but sometimes it’s stressful and occasionally requires long hours (with no overtime pay). The head of our team resigned recently and I had the opportunity to consider his job but after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that I’d only be doing it for the status and pay rise, not because I would enjoy it. So I’m staying put!
Having no income other than AirBnB from my spare room
...and the pants. You forgot about the pants.
Hate my job at the moment. Wildly stressful, brutal hours and morally challenging (basically I work in an episode of The Thick of It). A change of Government would help. I'm earning decent money as far as the public sector goes, but the housing market is so daft I still can't get somewhere "nice" (how funny that a three bed semi in a 'good' area is a ridiculous dream for my generation...) without committing myself to another 20 ish years of mortgage-based servitude.
Work is unsuprisingly having a disasterous impact on my relationship, and my partner has a similarly stressful job with the added twist of a commute so long she stays elsewhere a few nights in the week.
Life is a bit s***t to be honest 🙁 .
No-one seems to be happy in the south east of england these days, so Im moving out.
Thankfully remote working allows me to do this.
No-one seems to be happy in the south east of england these days, so Im moving out.
My sister and her husband are both London Meedya big cheeses. They've got the telephone number salaries, the 3 million quid Islington townhouse, the Times Sunday Supplement lifestyle, eating out at Michelin starred restaurants.
The hours they work to maintain this lifestyle are absolutely insane. They're both constantly travelling. The stress levels are off the scale. She never seems to be not working. If we go away for the weekend, she's constantly on the phone or answering emails, or having to cut it short to dash back to London. Madness. They have a full time nanny who sees considerably more of their kids than they do.
They've been in London that long, they think this is 'normal'. To me it looks like a living, waking hell.
Noone ever bought any of the pants. 🙁
We used to have a CFO who when anything went wrong e.g. upset customer, order lost etc would say “Did anyone die, no, in which case can’t be that bad.”
I really like that attitude as it put work in perspective….
We also used to have a CFO/FD who would say things like that... and just this weekend, she died of a brain tumour that went undiagnosed until a week or two ago, leaving behind a husband and two small boys. Absolutely awful... but you bet it's made everyone in the business wonder if the daily grind is worth it. Fortunately I work for a very good little company that looks after its people very well, and I enjoy working there, but she was only a year or two older than me...
Ironically I got congratulated for dealing with the situation in a calm and collected manner (there were two other fairly important business problems happening the same weekend which I was largely responsible for handling) but I didn't dare admit it was because some time ago I had learned not to get emotionally invested with work. I got caught up in it in my younger days, but having been around long enough to see how projects that seemed so important then are forgotten and irrelevant now, it's impossible to summon up that level of enthusiasm and energy to dive in again.
My Dad never got a retirement because he got ill before he could, and worked right up to the end anyway because he was an academic and loved his job. My mum had a stroke at an early age and never got to have a pleasant, productive retirement either. I haven't left it until I retire to get some travelling done (in fact I've done quite a bit), but my wife and I are prioritising getting to a point where we can ease back on work and take more time 'off' to do more interesting things, hopefully in a decade or so.
Not having children definitely puts you in a different perspective bracket from those who do. I can understand why people flog themselves to work hard to provide for their family - I'm not quite sure how anyone could ever think they had done enough for their kids when you see the likely future they have ahead of them - but I can't really get why people would work themselves into the ground just to be 'successful' for themselves. It must take some Olympic-level mental gymnastics to look at the world, look at their jobs and lifestyles, and conclude it was a worthwhile investment of the only life they will ever get to spend their prime years grinding away primarily for the benefit of business owners and investors. If it's your own business then fair-dos... but that's not for me either!
I like to think I'm an underachiever. I'm probably not.
I’ve provided my children with a life of unimaginable privilege where there’s never been a single day of their lives when they didn’t have everything that they need and most of what they want.
I’m nailing it.
never got to have a pleasant, productive retirement either.
Personally I'm not looking forward to retirement at all, I quite enjoy my day to day life as it is, so if I dropped dead tomorrow I'd have very few regrets.
I'm this guy
Made it to lunchtime on Friday - haven't killed anyone - great success!
The deathbed quote comes out a lot, I'm sure many wish they had worked smarter or got themselves into a better position when they were younger.
For me work takes up a decent amount of my time, that enables me to do what I want to but because it takes up that amount of time I have to get some enjoyment out of it, if all I did was attend somewhere I hated, endured people I didn't like etc. it would be awful.
the other part of it having done a few interesting things over my time so far is being able to deliver something, complete it or solve a problem is the rewarding bit. A bit of time helping a mate in a bike shop had those little wins as the day went on, at the moment I'm winning business and delivering stuff which does give me some satisfaction. If I was just plodding along I don't think I'd get that out of it.
Noone ever bought any of the pants.
How would one go about buying them?
Kudos for the Alan Watts quote!
Got two jobs, love them both. One ticks the feel-good/karma box but pays less than my bills, the other ticks the fun box and, these days, pays pretty well. My only complaint would be not enough time off (I work all my first job holidays and a lot of evenings/weekends to do the second job so the kids and us get enough bread and the odd treat), but then I'm about to reduce my days in job 1 to address this.
Neither provide a huge amount of challenge, which you seem to be realising is the source of your woes, so I started an MSc a few years ago - would highly recommend that! Hope to get back to that when I'm working less - which would of course ruin the new-found relaxation time, but I'm not very good at sitting around not doing much anyway so that won't be a huge problem for me! (Think I'm going to set up my studyspare around a turbo trainer so still getting the physical output I need)
I’ve provided my children with a life of unimaginable privilege where there’s never been a single day of their lives when they didn’t have everything that they need and most of what they want.
I’m nailing it.
You are. I'm getting that tattooed on my arse so when it goes tits up later my boss can read it when i suggest he kisses it.
Don't enjoy my job - in fact I realise that I've never actually ENJOYED a job I've had.
I enjoy some small parts of it but have never actually looked forward to going to work.
I've been relatively good at the jobs I've had, but very much fell into the different industries that I've worked in.
I would absolutely love to have a job that I enjoyed doing, that I felt made a positive difference to the world (or even one person's life) and that I looked forward to going into at least every so often.
Simple. All I need to do now is figure out what it is and make sure it pays the bills.
Oh...
Si
I’m sat reading this in a moody pub on my own on my 39th birthday.
I earn north of 150k a year, have no kids, own a flash car, all the bikes I could dream of and a s****y flat. I’m utterly ‘Kin miserable and pretty lonely. My relationship is falling apart with my Mrs, I don’t see my family anymore and barely have any friends. I’m so knackered from work that I can’t face riding my bikes. When I do ride, I struggle to manage more than 20 miles.
Trust me, you’re doing the right thing...
Don’t enjoy my job – in fact I realise that I’ve never actually ENJOYED a job I’ve had.
I enjoy some small parts of it but have never actually looked forward to going to work.
I’ve been relatively good at the jobs I’ve had, but very much fell into the different industries that I’ve worked in.
I would absolutely love to have a job that I enjoyed doing, that I felt made a positive difference to the world (or even one person’s life) and that I looked forward to going into at least every so often.Simple. All I need to do now is figure out what it is and make sure it pays the bills.
Oh…
Si
I just copied the entire post because it sums up my working life quite well. Really like the people I work with and that, combined with a family and a work ethic, are what keep me going in every day. Would love a job that I’m proud of and that makes a difference. Sadly I think that ship sailed long ago.
www.splooshpanties.com
Fire in, make me rich and successful boys and girls
I think you are all missing the point ....
OP, how many Instagram followers you got?
I love my job, and am very good at it - and i also work at a Castle. I make people happy, and making them happy makes me happy.
I didn't take a 'step down' to do it, though, so there the similarity ends. I've never really amounted to much, but i've always been more or less happy, so i've got that going for me.
I have two older brothers, and remember a conversation i had with my Mum a number of years ago that has really stuck with me. She said that she was only really worried about Thing One (not his real name), because he didn't know what he wanted. Thing Two always knew what he wanted, and what he needed to do to get it, so she never worried about him. Thing Three - me - she didn't worry about because she knew he didn't really want very much.
If there is a moral to the story, which i don't think there particularly is, it is to try and find what it is you really 'want'. There are things we undoubtedly 'need', and money is definitely one of those things, but what is it that you 'want'?
Thing One is fine btw - he rather 'fell' into where he's at, but is similarly very good at it.
PS - I have no Instagram followers at all, probably because i don't have an Instagram account - even if i did i don't reckon that number would be much higher
Someone please buy a pair of my girlfriend's smelly pants because I don't have a job and need money and a self esteem boost and an Alfa Romeo car
Following my cheery post on page 2.. .at least I've got my healt.. oh bugger.
The flip side of the stressed out busy sect is that someone values them enough to need them. That's not a bad feeling in itself. Because once you're not needed that's quite hard to deal with from my personal experience. (Working for myself perspective.)
It's difficult to get a balance and sometimes you have work very hard to support your family, i am lucky that i can work 3 days a week and make a very good living. However i expected to work until my mid 60s (out of choice) doing 2 to 3 days a week, then i had some health issues which means realistically i have maybe 3 years of being to do my job effectively which takes me to 57.
I am lucky between property pensions and business i will be fine, but if i had a rented house, minimum wage and no significant pensions i would be frankly s***ing myself.
So my advice is "you need to get a rainy day fund" and if that means working harder and longer for a while its probably worth it, but its a tough choice.
Been looking at Ma's and MScs and found one in environmental policy and management.
I don't have a science background, but for my BA I focused on environmental policy and had hoped to get in to that area once done.
Anyone in that area? Looking to do it part time. The fees are huge, but just about paid off my last loan, so taking out another student loan is money again I've never had so will not miss.
There seems to be more opportunities and roles in that area, than the heritage sector I am currently in.
Well, I’d like to buy Flange a beer. Happy Birthday mate, and try to see the good side of things. You know where we all are if you want to vent here.
I’m sat reading this in a moody pub on my own on my 39th birthday.
I earn north of 150k a year, have no kids, own a flash car, all the bikes I could dream of and a s****y flat. I’m utterly ‘Kin miserable and pretty lonely. My relationship is falling apart with my Mrs, I don’t see my family anymore and barely have any friends. I’m so knackered from work that I can’t face riding my bikes. When I do ride, I struggle to manage more than 20 miles.
This might sound a bit harsh but why not simply change career? If you're earning that much you must be pretty smart. And presumably have plenty cash tucked away. So change jobs, earn a lot less, sort your relationship (or start a new one), see your family, make new friends, ride your bike more. And you still have plenty time to make sprogs.
I appreciate there are maybe factors we don't know about, but overall the answer seems quite simple.
Oh, and happy belated birthday.
I've had a really good year this year, helped by finally having an ablation (9 months AF free), going back on to Sertraline, and the glorious summer helped too. For once I feel that I've got work and home life balanced, I'm loving spending more time with my daughter and work has been more productive too. Previously my happiness at work would influence everything. I run a micro business with a friend, it's not growing, in fact, just a child no2 is about to arrive my income is the lowest for years but at the same time instead of beating my self up about it I've learnt to take advantage of the flexibility self-employment can give.
It is very hard to stop comparing yourself to others, whether it's stuff on TV or social media or just friends. Have I achieved my potential? why does X earn more than me? why am I not a corporate director? Then I realise (combined with a bit of bad luck) that I'm not because I didn't make those sacrifices, I put my daughter to bed nearly every night, eat with my family and hardly ever travel away. Not many of my 'successful' friends can say that.
I've got some way to go but I slowly realising success is not totally tied to my career or income.