Love your job: Why I love my job and you should love yours
I love my job. There you go. I’ve said it. I don’t care who knows it. This is my Tom-Cruise-on-Oprah moment. That was amazing. Of course we all know how THAT went, right?
…sorry let me just take this call…
“Hello…Yes….Yes…What?…They’ve WHAT?!?!?…When??!?!?…Oh….Oh, I see. OK Bye”
Um. Anyway. Maybe ignore that last bit. But you get the general idea. I love my job. I love it so much that I’m writing a whole post to explain why.
Let’s just get this bit out of the way first. Yeah I know I know. I’ve only just written about why I would like to lose my job. What do I think I’m playing at? To be clear, just because I would rather do things besides working doesn’t mean that I dislike what I do. There are many, many good things about my job and I want to acknowledge that.
This post is also partly in response to A Dime Saved’s crie de coeur. You would have to have a heart of stone to not respond to that right?
Can we stop slamming work?
There is nothing wrong with working a 9-5 in an office where you have to get dressed. For many people this is their best option. (And some even secretly enjoy it)— A Dime Saved (@adimesaved) May 15, 2019
So to restore balance to the universe I’m going to do the opposite of slamming the 9-5 office job in a suit. I’m going to explain why it’s so amazing.
Love your job, love the money
So the main reason to love your job is the money. Let’s not kid ourselves. Some of us will have jobs that we would do even if we weren’t paid. If you have one of those then I’m delighted for you (and more than a little jealous). The rest of us go to work because we’re paid. If we stopped getting paid we would stop going to work.
But, money is a pretty good reason to love working. That money gives me shelter, food and warmth. It pays the bills for me and my family. It allows me to save and invest. Every month it helps to shift me closer to my next stage of financial independence. Ultimately it’s what is going to allows me to stop work one day. This all makes me very happy.
If nothing else, we can all be grateful for the money that we get from working.
A job with benefits
While we don’t have the healthcare issue that there is in the US my pay package comes with a lot of benefits.
I can pay for personal travel insurance through work and it’s far cheaper than I would be able to get by myself.
While I’ve not taken advantage of it there is cycle to work scheme that takes the cost of the bike and accessories out of my gross, rather than net, pay.
My employers also matches pension contributions. That’s real money even if I can’t access it until I’m in my 50s.
For me though, the biggest one of the lot is paid holiday. My employer literally pays me to do nothing for five weeks a years – and that’s before public holiday. Let’s just think about that for a moment. I’m not going to do any work at all, but my employer is going to pay me anyway. If you pause for a minute that is totally crazy. When else do you not get what you pay for?
Yes I know that, we all earn the paid time off through our efforts during the rest of the year…but it still doesn’t stop it feeling like free money.
Love your work…out
The usual narrative about doing an office job is that it’s bad for your health. I can see that. The story of my work day for many years was to spend hours sat in a chair hunched over a keyboard. I would head out at lunchtime to get a say a big cheese-laden wrap, or some noodles, or even pizza. That even before I tucked into the cakes or whatever people brought in for birthdays and other celebrations. Fundamentally that’s was not the healthiest way for me to live.
What I’ve found is that, with a few tweaks, work is really good for my health.
Exercise
I’m trying to walk more than 4.5 million steps this year. To do that requires me to walk more than 12,000 steps every day. What I’ve found is that it’s almost trivial for me to be able to hit that number when I go to work. I walk to and from the station at both ends, head out to get something to eat at lunchtime and I’m there. In addition I have a basic rule that if I can walk to a meeting in half an hour or less then I’ll do that rather than take the underground. That means that I can often blast through my target for the day.
By contrast, days when I work from home are horrible for my step count. I’ll usually take the kids to school or head into town but basically I’m sat on my behind the whole day. It’s the same on weekends. There will be days when I only take 4-5,000 steps.
Food
The other thing that I’ve found is that work allows me to eat more healthily. For me routine is key to getting healthy. Now, when I’m at work I’ve decided to eat the same thing every day. I go to the same supermarket and buy the same thing. I know exactly what’s in it, how many of my 5-a-day it contains, how many calories. All of that. As I also have exactly the same breakfast everyday it meant that before I get home in the evening I know exactly what I have eaten.
At the same time I make sure that I drink lots of water. My Fitbit gives me a little nudge if I haven’t taken many steps over the last hour. Usually that’s because I haven’t left my desk so I take that as a reason to get up and get a glass of water.
Again, when I look at weekends my diet can be all over the place. We may be going out, or having people over. It may be that we decide to have a lie-in so we have brunch. If I’m going to drink alcohol at any point during the week it will most likely be on the weekend. The result of that is that weekend tend to be mean I eat less healthily.
It definitely required some effort and some changes but now, I love my job as it’s an excellent way to build in exercise and healthy eating.
Make friends (and possibly influence people)
Gallup has a methodology for measuring and benchmarking employee engagement called Q12. It’s a series of 12 questions that they ask employees in a range of companies. One of those questions is something like: Do you have a best friend at work?
I’m going to be honest and say that I don’t think that I have ever had a best friend at work. However I have made a number of friends through work. In fact I had a whole table of work friends at my wedding.
Even now I’ll try to have a coffee or lunch with various people just to chew the fat. You can call it networking if you like, and it is a bit, but more than that it’s seeing a friend.
As an adult making new friends is difficult. The nature of work is that you are forced to spend time with lots of people. That close proximity creates the opportunity for friendship.
Work’s interesting
I’m lucky in that I find my job is interesting. To be clear it’s not so interesting that I would do it if I wasn’t paid, but it has it’s moments. Some of what I get paid to do is the sort of thing that other people spend their evening and weekends doing in their free time. Some of the people that I get to meet and places that I get to go on a weekly basis are what others would see as once in a lifetime opportunities.
That’s pretty special.
Yes there’s also a lot of the ordinary stuff that comes with working in any office. There are also times when my work is dull or stressful or both. Overall though I am lucky that I get to spend my days being paid to do something that’s interesting.
When else do you get paid to learn?
I can’t remember how many courses work has sent me on. Early on that was to learn how to use things like Microsoft Office. Yes, when I started work it wasn’t a given that people would know how to use computers. Those courses had functional value and built my basic skills.
Much more interesting were the courses that I was sent on 7-12 years into my career. Those came about as I had enough of a track record for senior managers to identify me a someone worth investing in. As a result I got sent on a lot of courses that were about developing me as a person and a leader. Some of those things, like public speaking, time management, leadership, prioritisation etc were still functional but others were about understanding myself and others.
Those were things like personality tests, career coaching, understanding how I come across. Identifying my strengths and values. All, deeply, deeply fascinating for someone like me. It was these that helped mentally steer me to the path to Financial Independence. It was also on one of these that I was introduced to Simon Sinek’s idea of “Why?” Working out my “Why” has transformed how I think about work – a topic for another time.
Even now that I am past the stage where I am sent on formal learning courses I still go to conferences a few times a year where I learn a lot about the latest issues and trends in my sector (as well as benefiting from the networking).
Through all of this personal growth and development I still get paid – including any expenses.
Learning is a big reason to love your job.
Love your job! See the world!
I travel a fair bit for work. Not as much as I used to, but a fair bit. Unsurprisingly most of my travel has been in the UK. I’ve spent time in all of the nations, and quite a few of the regions, of the UK. It’s not just domestic though. Through work I have seen an awful lot of Europe as well as little bit of the US and Africa.
Unsurprisingly most of what I’ve seen of these places have been airports, stations, hotels, and meeting rooms. However unless I’m utterly trashed I try to make the effort to at least head out at night for meal somewhere local, or even just for a walk. Even when I have been just working it’s with international colleagues so I’m getting a tiny dose of the local culture.
The bottom line is that because of work I have gone to places that I would never have traveled to otherwise. Thank you work.
Be valued and useful
Work gives me purpose. What my company does can be argued to be critical to the UK. I’m a small cog in helping to make that happen. To be clear I’m not suggesting that we are a charity. We absolutely are a commercial company that exists to make money.
The thing is companies only exist because they can provide something that people find valuable. If they didn’t then they wouldn’t find people who would pay them. It doesn’t need to be anything other that giving people something that they enjoy. That’s good enough.
That’s enough for me though. I don’t go home and contemplate the futility of my existence. Most days I go home and feel something between neutral and fulfilled.
Being forced to think
When I’m at home doing the washing up I can’t really say that I am intellectually stimulated. I may be being entertained by the radio or a podcast but I’m not doing a lot of thinking.
At work I think a lot. Not all the time, to be sure. We all sit in on conference calls where we’re definitely not being intellectually stimulated. But, thinking definitely happens some of the time. It may be in a meeting where I am being forced to defend a proposal against hard questioning. Sometimes it hits when I’m sitting down trying to draft a report in a logically coherent way. Other times it’s at a brainstorming session where we’re trying to war-game how we respond to a competitor.
I find those times energising. They are times when I’m forced to use a lot of brain power and, often, to think on my feet. This is a good thing. I love my job forcing me to think…even if it’s not all the time.
Jobs provide routine
I wrote about my morning routine in the past Routine is something that I think is incredibly powerful…and destructive.
I have so much to say about routines more generally that I realise that it justifies a future post. What I will say for now is that it’s routine matters to a lot of people. Ignoring the early retirement aspect, a lot of people who retire find adjusting to life without a routine really hard. The routine that work provides helps to structure our days, weeks and years. We shouldn’t underestimate how important that it.
Free stuff!
I realise that it won’t be the same for everyone but I get a lot of free stuff from work. There are the basics like tea and coffee that lots of people will get, but it’s not just that. We have a lot of lunchtime meetings and even if it not one of your meetings there are always enough leftovers that I don’t have to pay for my own lunch that day.
I also get use of a mobile phone and a laptop. That means that I can write this post on the way to and from work. While we can’t make personal calls from our work mobile it’s perfectly legitimate to do things like check train times or the weather or the news (which I need to do for work). The net result is that I have a smaller, cheaper phone deal for my own phone.
Love your job for the free stuff!
Wrap up
A few final thoughts. Firstly, can you get all of these things from places other than your day job? Yes, absolutely. But it doesn’t change the fact that you can get all of these good things through work as well. That’s a good thing.
The other thing is that I am aware that this is very much biased towards an office job. Basically, that’s because that’s just what I know. Every job will have its own pros and cons. I’m just writing about what I know
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to suggest that work is its own reward. Rather I’m just reflecting on the idea that work isn’t all negative. Maybe it’s too high a bar to say you should love your job. Maybe it’s enough so say we should try to make work, whether it’s leads to financial independence or somewhere else, something that we can appreciate for what it gives us.
Where writing this has left me is feeling happier about my journey to financial independence. I absolutely still want to get there as quickly as I can, but I’m going to try to enjoy the scenery as I go.
Thoughts?
So is it just me? Do you enjoy your job?
What other things do you enjoy at work?
Haha, this does make a change from the usual bashing of the good old 9-5!
I can agree with much of what you’ve said – my 9-5 jobs in the past gave me travel opportunities, paid for me to learn, gave me loads of freebies, a final salary pension and helped me develop my naturally ‘disorganised self’.
However, I don’t love my job because I can’t say that I would do it if I wasn’t getting paid, but neither can I put my finger on any other job I would rather do right now. I’m in a job I’m happy with, which I never thought I would be, 25 years into my career and following redundancy. I’m not on a particularly high salary but what I’m on is enough and enough for me to pursue FIRE with realistic purpose. There’s company restructure on the cards, either later this year or next year, so I’m aware things could turn sour but will worry when it happens, not before.
I can really advocate the friends thing – my closest friends are ones who started off as colleagues (15-20 years ago) and who are now life-long friends. They’ve been like my family when my real family all one by one upped sticks and moved to the other side of the world.
I’ve never really identified with the side of FIRE where people hated their jobs or hated working for ‘the man’ – life’s too short to be doing something you hate.
I agree with this!
I’m extremely grateful for my job and it affords me many privileges; flexible working, lots of holidays etc. BUT, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t getting paid for it.
Something I truly love doing, I’d still want to do if we lived in a world where everything was provided for, I wouldn’t still go to the office. Although saying that, I would probably still program (just probably only 15% of my time).
You need to think like this post in order to get through the grind though 😉
Ah yes, the grind is real!
Doing it for no money is, for me, the measure of loving a job. There are people who get paid to do conservation work like coppicing trees. I love that sort of thing and would do it for free (in fact that’s one of the things I want to do when I’m FI). It sounds like programming for you. The great things about being FI is that if you want to spend 36 hours straight programming something you’re interested in you can do that. But, if instead you want to just read a fantasy novel you can do that as well.
It’s about having work choices.
I think that I came to the same conclusion about “like” vs “love” when it comes to my job. “Love” sets too high a bar.
Sorry to hear about another impending restructure. I hope that you’re not badly affected. Having said that seeing what happens to people around you, even if you are unaffected, is always hard. It touches on your point about having good friends from work. Seeing friends go through tough times is hard.
I’m a bit more sympathetic towards those that do jobs they hate (or at least dislike). If nothing else those jobs can be very lucrative! But more than that I think that many people just don’t have anything that they think they would hate less. In that case I can see the case to take the money and run.
Great post! I love that you included my tweet:) there are a lot of pros to “traditional” jobs that I think are often overlooked.
Well thank YOU for the inspiration!
You’re absolutely right. Given that most of the population spend most of their lives doing traditional jobs, not everyone is going to hate every aspect.
I don’t enjoy my work (customer service) but I certainly enjoy my job. Mainly for the pay, but also because my bosses are awesome. I work from home, so I don’t get the socialization aspect (another huge perk of most jobs, which you don’t appreciate til you work from home) but still I get plenty of benefits from my job.
And the work does kill 8 hours a day. But there’s enough down time that I can play on social media, work on the blog, run an errand or two or other things that free up my actual free time. So I’m quite lucky and definitely like (if not love) my job!
Oh I like that distinction. Enjoying the “job” but not the “work”. That picks up a lot of the points that I was making about what are, essentially, the side benefits of work.
You’re very right about the wider socialisation point. Even with people I wouldn’t describe as friends at work I enjoy the conversations and gentle banter, even when it’s just on work topics.
Pretty sure that I would find other ways to kill those 8 hours a day if I had to, but I know what you mean!
You have really made me think of holidays in a different way – getting paid for enjoying myself! Got a week off in June and I think that I will enjoy it even more now. My partner is self-employed so he earns nothing whilst we are away. I think sometimes that we don’t value what we have. I get 31 days annual leave every year and ten days for Bank Holidays. When I read some US blogs and see only two weeks paid leave a year I realise how good I have it. On top of that I get flexi, so if I have to work extra hours I can take it back at another time. The joys of the public sector – we don’t get coffee or lunch provided at meetings though. Can’t have everything I suppose!
I have a barrister friend who is essentially self employed. Like your partner if she doesn’t work she doesn’t get paid and she has the sort of personality that gets really worried about that even though she’s very comfortable. As a result she is terrible at taking planned holidays..she is a barrister though so I don’t feel TOO sorry for her!
I know, that US holiday thing is terrifying. I take as much holiday as I can, including buying more. It means it will take me longer to get to FI, but its worth it!
I loved this post, such a great read Caveman.
I generally pretty much agree with everything you are saying. I am very lucky that I don’t hate my boss and I am quite happy. After all, if there is any chance that I can be financially free it will much likely be cos of my boss payments, so I better like him as it won’t happen any time soon yet.
There is a positive perspective on most of our life situations, let it be work life or whatever, but it is up to us to grab it from the positive side and not the negative.
Thanks for contributing to the first!
Thanks Tony. I agree with your point about positivity. Ultimately things will happen to us whether we want them or not. The choice that we have is around how we react to those things. Looking at them positively rather than negatively is choice I make.
It’s something that I’ve had to learn though and as some point I’ll share the, rather painful, story about how I learned that lesson.