Is your boring job worth your time?
There’s a good chance that the job you do is actually pointless.
According to David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, it is probably meaningless and adding no value to anything.
“A bullshit job is a job which is so pointless, or even pernicious, that even the person doing the job secretly believes that it shouldn’t exist,” he says.
“Of course, you have to pretend – that’s the bullshit element, that you kind of have to pretend there’s a reason for this job to be here.”
But secretly, he says, if you think the job didn’t exist, either it would make no difference whatsoever, or the world would actually be a slightly better place.
Not surprisingly, he argues, the more your work benefits other people, the less they’re likely to pay you. The more useless the job, the more you can expect to earn.
And as for middle management? He calls these task-masters who are “to give people work that isn’t necessary, or to supervise people who don’t need supervision”.
He stresses that people are not inherently lazy saying that we work not just to pay the bills, but because we want to contribute something meaningful to society.
But the psychological effect of spending our working life on tasks we secretly believe don’t need to be performed is profoundly damaging, “a scar across our collective soul”.
Maybe the continuous automation of work has created a void we didn’t see coming.
And those hours we saved were supposed to free us to do more for ourselves.
Karl Marx argued technology would help free workers from harsh conditions and lead to reduced working time. Back in the 1930s, Bertrand Russell wrote of the benefits of “a little more idleness”.
In 1856, stonemasons building the University of Melbourne ceased work and marched to Parliament House to demand the right for the eight-hour day – eight hours labour, eight hours recreation and eight hours rest.
Maybe the problem is that leaders need to connect the dots to the purpose of the business. They need to become more supportive of their employees.
According to a report in the Australian Psychological Society’s InPsych, supportive leadership factors and the quality of a team climate regularly explain at least 50 per cent of the result in wellbeing.
Author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution and founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, says we are at the beginning of a technological revolution that “is changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another”.
He calls for leaders and citizens to “together shape a future that works for all by putting people first, empowering them and reminding ourselves that new technologies are first and foremost tools made by people for people”.
Former Westpac CEO Gail Kelly, who wrote Live, Lead, Learn, tells of how both individuals and companies thrive when they openly address the meaning of what they do, and understand the need to live a whole life.
So the soul-destroying picture of work painted by David Graeber may contain a glimmer of hope as leaders grasp with the issue of successfully addressing the meaning of work in the new economy.
Or it may be time to step out on your own, and make your own future, and make sense of how you can thrive in a world of both uncertainty and opportunity.
Warren Frehse is a career coach and workplace behavioural consultant. He is author of Manage Your Own Career: Reinvent Your Job; Reinvent Yourself and is a registered professional with the Career Industry Council of Australia.