LIFEdevelopment.info - Chasing Utopia

X Marks the Spot

This episode looks at perceptions of our work and the workplace and how they affect us. The various people who talk about work refer to a number of issues revolving around their work and its effects on many aspects of their lives.

 

A - Work Can Dominate Us

A strong theme in this episode is that work often takes too much time and energy out of our lives, and when this happens it dominates us more than it should.

• The current trend is that so much time is spent at work that there is little else left in your life to truly experience anything.

• Milan is a city that just thinks about work.

• We have such great forms of communication that your job can come home with you.

1. Why do you suppose people allow their work to dominate when there is so much else to life?

2. Do you think good communication technology is the real reason why we bring the job home with us?

3. Why should we work? Which basic human needs are we pursuing in our work?

 

B - Work Affects Our Life Quality

If work is dominating our lives, it seems that we permit this pattern of imbalance because it is part of our idea of what quality life is. Several speakers thought that city life diminished the quality of life and work.

• "Empty" is a word that clients use often to describe their state.

• The people are out there looking for some other way of existence.

• I don’t think the "play hard" aspect is there.

• I feel like in balance…I am not stressed about the morning…I have so much space. The rhythm is different (rural Italy).

1. Why do you think people find their work empty when it should give them fulfilment?

2. In your view, does city or country life have much to do with life quality, or is quality a state of mind?

3. What really determines the quality of our lives? Do you think is it largely balance or the lack of it? Suggest how working people can bring more quality into their lives.

 

C - Work is Stressful

The episode has much to say about the stressed lives of those living and working in the fast lane, particularly in cities. This stress could be seen as being a product of the materialistic view of things.

• In a big city like New York you have so much hunger in your brain, and stress, and power and work, and you need competition, this rush for money, that you easily lose your perception about yourself.

• When management go on holidays their idea of a holiday is to do nothing.

• The average American gets about nine days of vacation a year.

1. Is the workplace you know really as stressful as the episode seems to claim?

2. The first quote above sees city life, rush, stress, power, money, work and competition as somehow glued together. Do these summarise materialism, city life, or something else for you?

3. Do you think our work or city life stresses us, or is it our view of how the world works? Where does most of our stress seem to originate?

 

D - The Materialistic Treadmill

Most speakers in the episode thought that we work too long and hard because we are caught up in a materialistic treadmill, and that this is playing havoc with our family life.

• It seems as if we are producing 500 times as much as we were 100 years ago.

• The family with two workers works away long hours, not to get ahead, but to stay even.

• People are doing overtime to keep the American family alive, and the result is they don’t have a family.

• The people at the top are getting very very rich very very fast.

1. Ironically, the quest for the good life is seen to be tearing families apart. Why do you think this could be happening, and how does it work?

2. Is our collective hectic work schedule serving us well financially, or are we really on a treadmill doing more for less? What is your opinion?

3. Do you think work as our source of income is a cause of evil in our society, or does the evil lie in our wider culture that helps shape our reasons for working?

 

E - Work Shapes Personal Identity

There were a number of references to the idea that many people develop their personal identity through their work. This quest for identity also drives people to work longer.

• You try to get an idea of whom that person is by what his or her role in the job is.

• That drive to improve yourself because you are competing with yourself forces people to stay extra hours.

• Paradise is only inside myself.

• What is missed is the freedom to be yourself.

1. Is the identity of people close to you defined largely by their work? Should this be so?

2. How do you think our work take away our freedom, and the "paradise" within us?

3. What is the process by which people develop their identity? Do you think work could now figure in this process more than it used to?

 

F - Work Affects Relationships

The weight of opinion in this episode favours the view that relationships both in and out of the workplace are suffering because of the current work climate.

• Where is the message to invest in relationships outside work?

• It’s like people are there but it’s not possible to connect.

• The reality is when you turn off the computer you are still left with yourself.

• Definitely a trend towards people feeling that they can marry their jobs.

1. Why do you think there is a growing trend for many people to marry their jobs?

2. People are supposedly so centred on work that they have little to give their families and friends. Is this a choice, or are people dragged along by their circumstances?

3. Describe how you think competitiveness, pace and pressure isolate people at work.

 

G - Overview

1. The title of this episode is X Marks the Spot. What do you think "the spot" is?

2. Summarise what "the life of quality" is for you? Are you achieving it, and if not, what will you need to change to get quality?

3. How do you think you could bring more quality into your workplace?

 

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