This week is an especially momentous one for BDC. My youngest son – whom I often affectionately refer to as “Mini-Me” for reasons that become obvious once you compare our respective toddler photos – turned two years old, and we celebrated with the customary cake, ice cream, presents, and party. This week also marks the final installment of “The Cubicle Survival Guide” – for now anyway, but I will explain that in more detail below.
Beginning my weekly work for the Brush Fire Forum on Mini-Me’s second birthday made it very easy for me to decide what the topic of this week’s article would be. Knowing that this would be the last tip that I got to pass along to you for a while also made the choice crystal clear. This week’s Cubicle Survival Guide is the most important of them all: remember what you are really working for. It sounds simple, but I have seen and experienced all too often that it is an easy thing for people to lose sight of somewhere along the way.
I should begin by acknowledging that there are some folks out there in the world who are working eighty to hundred-hour weeks and running themselves ragged for strictly selfish reasons. Their goal is usually personal fortune or fame and their work takes the place of their family. These people represent a small minority of the working world, and I can comfortably choose not to consider them in my writing because they are all far too busy to stop and spend time on our website.
As for the rest of us, we get up and go to work each day for reasons that lie outside our own personal fulfillment and needs. Whether it be providing for our spouses, children, or extended circle of family or friends, we choose a job based on its ability to help us fulfill the responsibilities and obligations that we have in life. The people in our life are our top priority, and the occupations we choose are the necessary means we utilize to reach our desired end of giving them the comforts and advantages that come with financial security.
This is a primitive and instinctual motivation to work sacrificially on behalf of our families. It is one of the ways that we can demonstrate our loyalty and devotion to our loved ones. It is a noble and honorable mindset that can be maintained as a healthy stimulus to a successful career journey.
Unfortunately, this is also a mindset that can easily be exploited to the point where it begins to undermine the very people it is intended to benefit. Like many of the good things in life – when used to excess – the advantages they once provided can begin to serve as disadvantages. Every doctor will recommend that you get enough water to drink each day, but drinking too much water in a single day can be life-threatening. That is a far-fetched example, I know, but abusing the career motivation of providing for your family is unfortunately a much more common one.
What does this abuse look like, you ask? The answer is simple and far too typical in American homes. These are the parents that are so determined to fulfill every material want their children have that they rob them of the biggest emotional need in their childhood by spending hours at work that they could be investing in intimate quality time with their sons or daughters. These are the husbands and wives that are so driven to make sure their spouse is living in the biggest house on the block that they leave them alone in those mansions while they race to find the next dollar. Will your kids remember which fancy new gadget you bought them when they are older or will they remember the hours you spent in the driveway rebounding basketballs and teaching them how to shoot free throws? Will they feel more loved logging hours alone in their room on the new tablet you buy them or sitting across the table from you on a daddy-daughter date night?
You can quickly see how our society helps to drive people down the road from noble intentions to neglectful conditions. Our kids are conditioned by advertisers and their peers to badger us for the latest and greatest toys. Seeking to please and give them all that we never had when we were their age, we stay a little later at work, take an extra shift, and agree to more travel. The motivation to give our kids what we never had often leaves them without the most important thing that many of us did have growing up – functional family time.
I hope this week’s tip challenges you to open your eyes and evaluate what it is you are working for these days. My oldest son will turn five years old next month, and I can already see what a different world he is growing up in compared to my childhood. It is not uncommon for our family to be in the same room while operating in different worlds. I will be reading emails on my phone while my wife scrolls through Facebook on her phone. Our oldest will be playing train games on his Kindle and our youngest will be watching cartoons on his personal DVD player. We can even be a few feet apart but not really connecting together at all. The modern conveniences of our life make finding quality family moments hard enough, and the more time you spend away from your loved ones, the harder it gets. Make sure you are working for the right reason. It is noble and natural to want to work to provide for your loved ones. Once that work begins to interfere in the very relationships it is meant to support, though, it is time to reassess your career.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this article will be the final tip before “The Cubicle Survival Guide” goes on hiatus for a while. Rest assured there are countless more pages in the guidebook for me to share with you in the future. You are not getting rid of me that easily, though, so stop the celebrating and dancing around the water coolers. I will be back in a few short days to introduce a new series where I will take you out of my cubicle and into my survival bunker. Stay tuned…
