Work to Live

Aicila: [00:00:00] In 10 years, the only people who will remember that you worked late every night are your kids. So with that, I don't wanna talk about productivity, I wanna talk about orientation.

Many people leaving corporate jobs or nine-to-fives will come away with the idea that the problem was the company or a manager or the culture. And those things for sure contribute. They, they are absolutely a part of what you're dealing with. And a lot of us packed up everything we've been trained to do and brought it straight into our own businesses.

Same behaviors, different letterhead. So if you're someone who came into independent work, contract work, freelancing, side hustle, whatever you wanna call it, your, your, your own business, entrepreneurialism. What did you actually leave behind? And what did you unintentionally carry forward with you? Take some time to really think about that.[00:01:00]

Something I've talked about before, uh, is we have to stop the self-exploitation. And it-it's not just because we wanna treat ourselves well, but, but however you treat yourself, whatever behavior you accept for yourself, is a behavior that you will enact upon others. So it's something to understand.

Uh, when no one's tracking your hours, you do it yourself. When no one's measuring output, you build the metric internally. The external pressure may be gone, but your behavior stays because the belief behind it was never examined. In the US, workaholism is one of the few addictions you could list on a resume.

The harm is visible, and people still lead with it like a credential. That tells you something about what we've decided to reward and what our unconscious assumptions are about how things are supposed to go. So when you think about your work ethic, if you're someone who prides yourself in getting things done, where did it come from?

Like, I know for me, [00:02:00] I... there's two pieces. I have a work ethic that is something I'm really proud of. That is about doing the job. So when someone hands me a job to do, I get very curious about what it takes to make it happen. I get problem-solvey. I really dig into what are the component pieces that create success here, even what is success.

And, and that I really actually value. I don't wanna stop doing that. And it is something that will keep me up. Like, I will stick around working a problem, uh, long past the quote-unquote hours. But it's not because of a hustle culture. It's, it's because I'm genuinely just invested in it. An example, like my dad has an iPhone, and he wanted it to-- He-- My cousin got him an Apple TV, and he wanted to be able to play music on his TV.

And so I was working to get them synced up. But because he had gotten a new iPhone that hadn't done the update with iTunes [00:03:00] when they switched it over, there was a lot of pieces to this. And I didn't wanna, like, not hang out with my cousins and my dad. But I really wanted to make this work for him 'cause I knew if I didn't, it wasn't probably gonna get done.

Uh, not that anyone would else try, but just that it was a hairy enough problem, I knew it needed some attention. And so I think I sat in the living room for about four hours just slowly picking apart the different pieces. And I kept saying, "I'm gonna try one more thing, and then I'll be done." And my, my cousin was like, "That's hilarious."

And, and she and my dad were both like, "Wow, it's really wild to see you, you like this. Like, we didn't know." But I think it's one of the things that has, in life, made me successful because I will get really invested in trying to understand it. It's not that the, the problem bothers me.

It's that I, I really wanna get, like, why is this happening this way? How can I build that? And so that part of my work ethic, I think, is a great... There's another part of it that is US culture. You know, you gotta, you gotta be [00:04:00] productive. Y-you have to prove your worth and survival-based. Some ideas about, you know, how I am valuable in the world and to others and to myself.

And, and those, I think, can be a lot more destructive and lead to a lot more of that self-exploitation. So, um, take some time and really think, like, what, when i-- when are you in the zone, if you will, working? When you're lost in what you're doing? That's probably, I would say, not, not a harmful one. Still probably needs, it still will likely need some, um, parameters because you also, you can burn yourself out with that.

But it's less likely because there's a certain amount of, like, joy and creation that comes in it. Work can feel like a clean answer to the question of, "What are you for?" It's concrete, measurable, legible to other people. And there's something genuine in it. There's a real satisfaction in building something, real momentum and execu-execution.

And it, for me, sometimes it's an easy answer to, "What am I gonna do next?" You know, I work for myself. There's always a job to be done. [00:05:00] Uh, but it, it, the work isn't the problem. It's when we mistake having a full calendar for a full life. And they can look the same from the outside. And from the inside, one of them leaves you with something, and the other one just kinda keeps you busy.

And there-- the work can fill that void. It can provide a structure. It can, it can give you-- Some-sometimes you can get your l-- use your identity in it. And getting really clear about which one that is for you is also really important. Because If your identity is your job, then if something happens to your job or your ability to do it, then you aren't gonna know who you are.

It's a little future-proofing, right? Really think about what is underneath it. So like, where's your work ethic come from? And then also, if you find yourself really defaulting to work, is it, is it because of some of these other things? Like it's a, it's a way to, to not sort of do some of that personal work.

Or the other thing, and I talked [00:06:00] about it a little bit a little while ago, is you can get in the habit of working. 'Cause there's always something to be done, right? And, and so disrupting your habits can be a really good, good way to notice if that's what's happening. And creating some hard stops. Like I pa-- I have some rules for myself around how I do my evenings because I do really love what I do. And I also recognize that if all I do is work, I'm kind of a boring person. And I'm, I'm not very fulfilled as a human.

So I have to find ways to, to sort of create a natural shift. So I'll set a, a meeting up or I'll make a plan to, to, to go to something like a game night as a way of, uh, creating that natural break. Because I'm, I'm home. You know, if you work... If you leave the office, there's a natural break that occurs, whereas if you don't, you have to create that for yourself.

So that's another one to, um, think about. I don't know if any of you have read, [00:07:00] um, Orson Scott Card. I really love Ender's Game, loved more of the following books. And in Speaker for the Dead, one of the characters, Ojo, he's the child of this brilliant scientist, and everyone's like, "Why do you work as a bricklayer?

Like you could do anything." And the narrator realizes that the reason that Ojo has chosen to work as a brick layer, layer is because he doesn't do a job to fulfill his life. He's a father, and his focus is his family. He has a job that pays the bills. And he works to live. And, uh, his siblings, who are less satisfied in their lives, so maybe there's a little commentary there, uh, they live to work.

They're, they're scientists. They're very fixated on their jobs. Their jobs are everything. And everything else is a little bit of a side note. And I'm not even gonna say there's a judgment on this, but do be really clear. Like if you're living to work, then your personal relationships are always gonna be de-deprioritized, and you're gonna have to understand [00:08:00] that when people are feeling left out or hurt or neglected, they are being so.

If you're working to live and you, you create more fullness in your life, that's gonna give you a different outcome. Now, you can obviously create space for your family in a personal life plenty of people do that. But just get really clear on which one's which and, and what you're focusing on because the, the orientation is kind of the big part.

Like you might work the same hours, have the same output, maybe even have some of the same satisfaction in the moment. And if you're oriented towards your life, that's gonna show up differently in your results than if you're oriented towards your work. Not what you're doing, but what you're doing it for.

That question can be harder to answer than it sounds. Most of us haven't asked it in a long time. And we certainly don't ask it regularly. And sometimes it's easier to look at someone else and see it than to ask it of ourselves. So just take a minute and kinda think about what that looks [00:09:00] like for you.

And if, if in some ways your priorities haven't changed but your actions have shifted, just make some adjustments. You'll probably be a lot happier. And so will the people in your life. So my closing question here is: how do you wanna be part of the world you're in? Not what do you wanna accomplish? Not what's your five-year plan?

Just what kind of presence do you wanna be in the life that's actually happening around you? 'Cause that's really the question underneath all of it. And it's a way to kinda sort out which is which. And I mean, let's be clear, I love my job. I love what I do. I love the, the, the ways that I get to show up in lives. And I also really love my life.

And I think that that's ultimately the goal. And I want that for everybody. Uh, if this hits, the, the energy snapshot is a good place to kinda get a sense of where your energy is going and how it's, how it's managing. It takes a couple minutes, and it'll tell you which energy type is running lowest right now, bicurean.com\energysnapshot.

I'll pop the link in the show notes, [00:10:00] and thanks for tuning in.

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