Posted by Justen Collins on November 30, 2012
I want to welcome you to this week’s installment of the Cubicle Survival Guide with a reminder of the people we aim to help here. This series is meant for the folks in the call centers and administrative towers around our fair country. The kinds of places where your status is determined by the square footage you are allotted or the height of your privacy walls or your proximity to the windows. These can become bland and uncomfortable places to spend your days in a hurry.
It is easy to look at people who do work they are truly passionate about for a living and become envious. Working in a full-time ministry or charitable role seems like it would be incredibly fulfilling. Starting, building, and running your own business based around something you love to do seems like it would be incredibly rewarding. Developing a skill or a craft that you enjoy but that also provides enough financial income to sustain your family seems like it would be incredibly gratifying.
For the vast majority of us, though, making ends meet and keeping food on the table requires performing a job that really “feels” like a job. That is where the Cubicle Survival Guide comes in handy, I hope.
You may not work inside an actual cubicle, but you can probably relate to the internal feelings and frustrations that are common across so many of the occupations in America today. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who do what they love and love what they do, I encourage you to read and share these weekly thoughts with others in your life that may not be in the same boat as you.
Last week, we talked about having that “attitude of gratitude” as you go about your business. This week, we will focus on another aspect of your life that you can control outside the office that will improve your quality of life inside it. I promise we will deal with some real life stories from corporate life in the coming weeks, but if we first lay down some foundational practices, you will be even more positioned for success – or at least survival – in the cubicle jungle.
This week’s Cubicle Survival Guide tip is to have a hobby…and if you don’t have one, get one…soon. I know this one sounds overly simplistic like me telling you to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly, but hear me out before you dismiss the wisdom of this tip. There is more upside to an active hobby life than you may realize at first.
Let’s start with the obvious benefit. We may not all be able to find a career that utilizes our passions, but there is nothing stopping us from finding a hobby that we truly love. Having an outlet that truly engages your mind, body, and soul is crucial for your mental health and serves as a powerful outlet for stress relief from the world of work. Hobbies are a great way to make sure your nights and weekends are not consumed with thoughts of work – not to mention emails, voicemails, and nagging worries – that are better left to the next working day.
There is another somewhat less obvious benefit of hobbies that you will experience. Unless your chosen distraction is very socially awkward, having something interesting filling your spare time tends to make you a more interesting coworker as a result. Folks will be more apt to engage you in conversation if they think you might have some new stories of interest to relay. One of the main strategies of the Cubicle Survival Guide is having a network of sympathetic peers around you, and those alliances often begin forming through simple interactions like these. If people find you boring (never a good thing, even if you really ARE boring) they will seek to avoid you at all costs. Interesting hobbies are great ways to illustrate you are an interesting person.
My own life attests to the effectiveness of this simple tip. In the early days of my career, I was spending the weekends as a professional wrestler. You can imagine how curious this made the folks who worked around me during the week and saw me walking with a limp or noticed the tall patent leather boots in my truck. Later in my career – and before my sons came along – my wife and I traveled a lot. I would come back from each outing full of stories of interesting sights and tantalizing restaurant reviews that folks around me were always anxious to hear to help pass a slow work day. My ultimate hobby, though, is writing. I have devoted some amount of time to writing as a hobby since I was a kid. I wrote for wrestling magazines, I covered basketball games, I wrote restaurant reviews, I wrote short stories, I wrote poems, I wrote a book, and I ran several websites. Through all those writings, I allowed my friends and coworkers to read my work and learn more about me in the process.
My hobbies have helped me build and sustain lasting relationships with the people working around me every day. In turn, those relationships have led to career connections and new opportunities. My writing hobby has even had direct benefits on my work success as I have been complimented by bosses and managers in every job I have ever had for my written communication skills.
If I have not convinced you by now, I am not sure I ever will. Most you of probably already have a hobby that you do simply for fun, so I am hopefully not asking too much of you this week. Whatever it may be, don’t take it for granted and review it with fresh eyes after reading this. Are you utilizing your hobby to its maximum benefit? Are you truly passionate about it? Does it make you forget the worries of work and reduce your stress? Do you share your hobbies with your coworkers? Can any aspect of your hobbies improve your work performance? Think those questions over and meet me back here next week.
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