To

work is not just going to a place where you dispense your responsibilities or what is expected of you. To work is to become more glorious. It is to be immersed and get lost while you are using your talent, intellect, passion, inspiration and creativity to make things happen.

Really, Are people working?

I appreciate the fact that we have replaced routine and repetitive tasks with machines. At the end of the day, it is someone who worked that invented that machine. At a later date, we shall look extensively at different ways that work is exemplified.

If you look at the definition I am working with today, it would be difficult to find people that are really working, wouldn’t it? I mean, we have people who “Go to work”, but they really do not work at the end of the day.

Recap

This situation is a result of several contributory factors. We have already covered four of these as follows:

1. People do not work because of distractions
2. People do not work because of indiscipline.
3. People do not work because they procrastinate
4. People do not work because they are tied in the culture of “jobs”

We Are Always in Control

So far, the several reasons why people do not work have all been tied to things that are within our control. In other words, to work as we are supposed to, we must make the conscious decision to.

In today’s article, we shall cover two more reasons why people do not work. Remember, our working definition of work is to bring our all and get lost in doing what we have been called to do.

Why People Do Not Work…Continuation

5. Purposelessness

This is straight forward. The reason why people are not engaged at work is that they are doing what seems to be like a punishment to them.
There are different reasons for this:

First, some people are in the survival mode. They have to do what they have to do in order to pay bills.
Second, some people are on the path of purpose. They are simply starting off and might be stuck on some level on their way to knowing their purpose.

Third, some people, as already discussed previously, are already steeped into the culture of jobs. They are engaged at some kind of work but are not necessarily loving what they are doing.

Why Productivity is Low

Studies show us that over 68% of any workforce is disinterested or disengaged. Productivity, therefore, is not as good as it is supposed to be. People are stuck in the wrong professions.

On the contrary, people who are engaged are those who are working on purpose. In other words, they have found some ultimate meaning in their work that is not predominantly financial gain.

Purpose and Engagement at Work

If you wanted to be thoroughly engaged to the level of being sold out at your work, you have to be doing what you love.
I know, I know. It sounds motivational and you can easily throw it out of the window. Well, you might not necessarily find out what you love from the get-go, but at least you can join the path of seekers of purpose.

All you need to do after launching an inquest is to be a good steward with where you are and with what you have.

6. Seeking for Comfort

My friend Andrew Ssenyonjo shared extensively on this article about protestant work ethic. It was constructed on the premise that work was a curse of disobedience of mankind.

Consequently, people view work (of any kind by the way) as something that must be endured. The nature of work, of course, is not to offer comfort, however much we try to make our work environments as comfortable as possible.

Comfort and Work

The general disposition of seeking comfort rather than seeking to add value and to contribute in life will see many people not working as they ought to. Lots of energy is lost in jostling for perks, parking spaces, corner offices and so on, but there is no correlation between those things and real work being done.

So when we change our disposition to the addition of value, bringing our “A” game, insisting on our excellence, leaving nothing to chance, we shall find ourselves really working.

I am not in any way saying that we should put up with pathetic working conditions. The work environment should be as conducive as possible, but not for the sake of comfort. It should be as conducive as possible to enhance productivity.

Let’s pick this up in the next article.