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I have two children, 32 and 22, and they both say I’m a workaholic. I explain to them that I don’t agree, that I love my job, and I see a continuum between my job and my life, I am a designer. Could they be right? I keep saying I’ll retire as soon as I can, and my wife laughs out loud saying I will work till my company (or life) kicks me out, could she be right?
I looked up and workaholics are excessively focused on their work, to the point where it negatively impacts other areas of life. Signs of this might be a compulsive need to work (or using it as the excuse), neglecting self and others, a sort of guilt when not working. I don’t feel guilty when I am not working, but it slowly creeps in that you should probably get back to it, and that is if no one reminds you of it. The line between having to work and wanting to work is not that clear, there are external pressures (mortgages, children in college age, lifestyle…) and internal (passion, identity, ambition…), that line is even blurrier if you are a designer and are always designing, but I wonder if the line is there when you are working for your boss or working for yourself, for your betterment, as a way of life. In any case, and though I might or not be a workaholic, an idea that keeps assaulting me as I get older is, what exactly is work, and what am I doing that might be qualified as such.
I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast, an episode titled “What Do People Do All Day”. It reminded me of an article I read a long time ago and keep going back, Jeffrey Pfefer’s “Why Can’t We Get Anything Done”. I read a lot of Pfeffer’s work on power in organizations when I was doing my PhD research, eye-opening for designers.
A few things that came out in the conversation, one of them is that work is more than labor, especially manual labor. Though I try and keep my manual skills sharp as a designer, they are not as they were when I practiced design doing daily, does that mean I am not designing anymore? After spending last week at a factory where the focus was discussing and agreement on better ways of working, it was a great week, but I came out drained mentally and emotionally, more than physically. Another one is about the changing definitions of work, while many have found more sophisticated titles for what they do, and some actually have tried to abandon designer all together, I still identify myself as a designer first and foremost. And this brings about the discussion of work and identity, and I do identify as a designer, probably emulating my own design heroes, when design was sort of a ‘cult’. I get real satisfaction of design in its many forms, even the more mundane and manual chorus, but I wonder if this is related to the work itself or if this is how I am built, what I was indoctrinated with and what has been my life experience.
Reflecting on the initial misalignment between how I see myself in work and how others around see me, I am convinced we are all saying the same. I am a bit of a workaholic, I need to distinguish better my personal designer life from working for others as a designer, while they are connected, it’s not the same. And I believe I will retire, when the time is right, but I don’t think I will stop living the life of a designer, I may or may not find opportunities to get a paid job, but I will always work as a designer, as long as life allows me to do so.
https://www.fastcompany.com/39841/why-cant-we-get-anything-done
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