When you work, work!
About seven years ago, when I was around 27 years of age, pretty sure that I knew everything about business, the world and all that, I had the opportunity to sit down with a group of major CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. I’m pretty sure that at the time, the next youngest person in the room was probably around 45, and there I was, a baby-business person with no idea about the enormous opportunity that had befallen me. I learned a lot that day, but one thing that I remember hearing from everyone didn’t resonate with me until many years later. All of them, in giving me advice about how to run my business told me basically, “During the day concentrate on your work ,when you get home spend time with your family, rest, enjoy your weekends…”
See, I’m a work-a-holic – and when I have spare time, I tend to get on the computer, work with employees, contact clients… you know, keep myself constantly busy… busy…busy. Honestly, at the time, it seemed like a smart idea to me: the more I worked, the more successful I’d be, the more money I’d make, and then perhaps I’d be able to rest some other time in the future. You know, that “far off” time in which I’d sell my business, make a few billion dollars, and move to the Islands and drink iced drinks until I passed out.
Here’s the first bit of advice, whether you run a company, or you are an employee: When you work, work. Multi-tasking, MySpace, AIM, you name it has invaded our workspace and employees are wasting billions of dollars of productivity. A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that people who engage in multi-tasking on the computer, exhibit a wide range of problems including the inability to “ignore distractions, keep irrelevant memories from interfering in their present task, and the inability to switch from one task to another, mostly because they can’t help thinking about the task they’re not doing.” All the stuff that workers engage in, and most likely their supervisors are preventing them from working. We all know it—MySpace, facebook, browsing the news sites instead of working.
Let me say this again: WHEN YOU WORK, BE COMPLETELY ENGAGED IN WORKING ONLY. BE MINDFUL OF WORKING AND THAT YOU ARE AT WORK.
This may just sound like the words of an executive who wants to push his employees, but there is a very, very important part to the other side of this that we should all be extremely mindful of also:
WHEN YOU ARE AT HOME, BE AT HOME.
When we aren’t working, we sometimes are obsessed with working – thinking about it, worrying about it, instead of the things at hand, the things more important. We unfortunately are in a society where we are obsessed with keeping busy… busy…busy….where we always have junk running around in our mind: fears, worries, the future, the past, you name it. We spend most of our time either doing stuff to keep us busy, or unfortunately obsessing about things to keep us busy. We don’t just enjoy ourselves, with the little things that we have, especially our loved ones.
When you come home, I implore you, be at home completely. Take a few breaths before you go into your house, let out the work stuff and then concentrate on your house and the people at home. If you are thinking about work then you are denying yourself the opportunity to relax but also denying time to your loved ones. If you are obsessing about things that don’t matter… what happened yesterday, what is going to happen tomorrow…blah..blah..blah…blah.. then you are missing out on the only thing that actual exists: NOW.
Please read that again:
The only thing that actual exists is NOW.
If you have a loved one, your wife, your husband, your lover, the one you have given your heart to, please consider the following. When you are not focused on them, when you are obsessed with your job, you are missing out on the most important things in life: life itself. If you think that you will have time in the future to spend time with them, you are living a lie – there will never be that time, it will pass you by, your kids will grow up, you will be gone in a blink of an eye. There will never be “that time.” That time is now.
Thich Naht Hahn (corrected spelling), world-renown Buddhist monk, writer and activist writes that when you are with your loved one, be completely with them. He writes to look into your loved ones eyes and ask:
“who are you my darling?
who are you who has taken my suffering as your suffering?
my life and death as your life and death?
my love, why aren’t you a dewdrop, a butterby, a bird?”
“Ask with your whole being. If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die. But with mindfulness, your attention will water the wilting flower. “
“I know you are here, beside me, and it makes me very happy”
“With attention, you will be able to discover many new and wonderful things – her jobs, her hidden talent and her deepest aspirations. If you do not practice appropriate attention, how can you say you love her?”?
3 Responses to “When you work, work!”
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Very good points, and something to keep in mind. This is the hardest thing to do for those of us working from home, and there are many of us out here who are working from home. After ten years I have found it too easy to be working all the time at home and finding less and less separation of the two. I actually took a job outside the industry part time to get out of the house which has helped me separate work and home actually. Now I do my work at home in the mornings and the forced break when I leave for my other job allows me to concentrate on family after I get off of that job. It seems strange, but adding twenty hours of work a week actually ended up giving me more time with my family.
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Sai Baba Says: Past is past, it will never come back, futrure is uncertain don’t think about the future. Think in the present, it’s omnipresent.
A very insightful post indeed! I have read a lot of these life lesson, don’t work too hard, but for some reason your ability to level with the audience is superb. Struck a cord with me, as I have recently ventured out on my own, and understand the perils of working TOO hard, and obsessing over this even when I try to shut-off.
Thank you.