Work Matters Less Than You Think It Does

By Minda Zetlin | Posted 6/14/23

Just as tiredness clouds our judgment so that we can't tell how tired we are, overworking and hyperfocusing on our jobs distorts our judgment about how important those jobs are.

Companies these days like to talk about their missions — missions and visions are very much in vogue. A few years ago, I set out to find some of the worst ones for a column, and I found one company that said its mission was "to make every brand more inspiring and the world more intelligent." Lofty goals, but in case you were wondering, what the company actually did was manufacture stick-on labels.

That's a ridiculous example. But it's much, much too easy to get pulled in by lofty claims or lofty ideas about the significance of our own work. Simple math tells us that if you work at least fifty-five hours a week, as many people do, and if you sleep eight hours a night, as everyone should, you'll spend at least half your waking hours at work during your full-time career.

Chances are, you'll feel a lot better about that if you believe your work means something. This dynamic may make it easier for you to convince yourself that making just a little more money for your company's shareholders or helping someone market their product more effectively is making the world a better place. At least until you take a step back and really think about it — the kind of thinking you can only do when you're rested and have a reasonable amount of time off.

But what if you do work for an organization that truly is making the world better, by treating disease or helping people in need or preserving the natural world? In that case, the temptation to work too hard is going to be particularly acute. You have to resist that temptation, though, because as we've explored earlier, working longer hours doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more done — people who work sixty hours in a week get less done than those who work forty hours. And if you're chronically tired, you simply can't do your best work.

In the hallway outside my office door, there's a picture of my mother and stepfather, both of whom have been dead for several years. I didn't plan it this way, but every day when I leave my office, the first thing I see is the two of them, her in her eighties, him in his nineties, sitting on a deck near a beach, holding hands and clearly devoted to one another. They both worked extremely hard throughout their careers and cared a great deal about their jobs, but, other than as a means of providing retirement funds, those jobs didn't seem to matter a whole lot by that point — and even less now.

When my job is making me crazy, which happens more often than I'd like to admit, seeing them right at eye level outside my office door is a healthy reminder not to take things so damned seriously. As Bronnie Ware's patients knew, a day will come when all the things we worry over — deadlines and sales trends and everything else — will seem pretty insignificant. Until that day comes, our most important job is to keep that in mind.

Exercises to Try

1. Set a Firm Quitting Time

This is something I've tried to do several times throughout my career with only middling success. But I'm going to keep trying because I know how important it is. Set a time for finishing work every day, and commit to leaving work at that time, no matter what. As always, make changes in baby steps. If you find yourself (as I sadly do) still at your desk at 9:00 every evening, don't set a quitting time of 5:00 and expect it to stick. Instead, plan to leave at 8:30 or even 8:45. Once you've done that successfully for a couple of weeks, you can inch your quitting time a little earlier if you'd like.

What if there's a drop-dead deadline or a piece of work that absolutely, positively has to get done? Well, then you might have to work past your quitting time for that particular evening. But before you do, make sure to stand up and walk away from your desk and your work for at least five or ten minutes. Do something completely non-work-related, such as taking a walk or calling a friend to say hello. When you return to your desk, ask yourself again if it's really, truly necessary for this work to get done tonight. If the answer still is yes, you can go back to work. But, at least for me, the act of breaking my brain out of work mode for just a few minutes often gives me the perspective to see that what I was obsessing about just a little while ago really isn't that urgent or that crucial.

2. Have a Conversation with Your Older Self

Earlier, I invited you to have a talk with the younger self from your past. Now it's time to meet with the older self from your future. The older version of you is ninety-five years old and living in a retirement facility, but older you is still as sharp and clear-minded as you are today. It's been at least twenty years since older you had a job. Instead, older you spends time enjoying visits from family members and friends, playing cards, going for slow strolls around the park, reading, and watching your favorite movies.

Sit down and tell older you about the work you're doing right now. Explain why it's important, if it is, and what difference it makes in the world and in your own life. Explain why it matters for you to do the job as well as you possibly can. Also tell your older self about anything that you missed because of that job, whether it was cooking dinner for your family more often or trips that you wanted to take but didn't or events that you wanted to attend but couldn't.

Imagine what your older self would say in response. Assume that your older self loves you and approves of you — after all, the choices you make and the life you live are your older self's choices too, and we all love ourselves, or we should. But older you may have some perspective on whether filing that report when you said you would is really all that essential. And the vantage point of a ninety-five-year-old may be a better viewpoint from which to differentiate things that are really important from those that only seem that way.

Career Self-Care

Minda Zetlin is the author of Career Self-Care: Simple Ways to Increase Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work. …