|
Article:
Do You 'Work To Live' or 'Live To Work'? by: Charlotte Burton Let's be realistic here - hands up all of you who bounce out of bed every single morning, raring to get to work and enjoying yourself every minute of the day? If you didn't put your hand up (even metaphorically), you're not alone. There have been so many articles published recently about working statistics in the UK - that Brits work the longest hours in the EU, that we have higher risks of heart disease than our continental friends due to stress and poor diet, there has been a rise in people 'downshifting' and moving to the country to raise chickens and weave baskets. But many people who dream of doing just that don't, especially when there are so many television programs on, which show all the grisly details about how people who do downshift simply exchange one set of problems for another. While there are many people who make a real success of changing their careers in such a dramatic fashion, it might be worthwhile sorting out what problems you do have with your current career before making that radical decision to downshift. First Things First The first place to start is to think about why you chose to do what you do - what was it about Law that attracted you originally? Was it the logic that attracted you? Or the feeling of winning? Or the love of solving problems? Or was it the '˜safe' thing to do? Were your parents lawyers and pushed you in that direction? Was it for the money? Even if the last few questions ring true for you, you can still enjoy your work. What do you actually do? Think about all the aspects of your job: what do you actually do during the day? Speak to people on the phone? Do research? Prepare reports? Present at meetings? If you do more than two of the above on a daily basis, you're not so different to many office workers. So think about what part of the day you look forward to - apart from going-home time. Do you enjoy the challenge of presenting, or love learning new facts, or talking and interacting with other people? Try thinking about your day in terms of the actual things you do and what you can get out of each different task. Could you delegate or reassign the tasks you don't like doing and shift the majority of your workload towards the things you prefer? Or can you think about it all in a different way? How much of your day is spent doing the things you actually like? If it is less that 50%, will you settle for that? Try doing a rated pro/con list of everything you do, with each item being scored on a 1-5 scale, where 1 means you love it and 5 means you can't stand it. If you have lots of 1s on your pro list and lots of 3s on your con list, that's good, but if it is the other way around, and your pro items are all scored at 3 and your con list is all at '5
|
