The year 2007 was quite a trivial one for me in terms of teenage traumas. For example, I thought that I was in love with someone, which, in retrospect, I should have kept to myself. But unfortunately, I did not do that, and A.B. told me that I was more of a friend to her than a boyfriend. Indeed, this was the same argument that I had also heard from A.N. when I was 10 and S.D. when I was 12 years old. Bye bye self-confidence. Bye bye willingness to ever try it again.
But enough about love dramas, my biggest trauma from back in those days was caused by two mistakes I made in the college year of 2006/2007. The first one was me allowing my dad to go to a parent-teacher conference to meet my high school tormentors, a.k.a. my Greek/Latin/philosophy teachers. In short, he met them, he did not hate them, and he agreed with them that I did not earn much more than the barely-average grades they had been giving me for years. The second mistake I made, was me selecting a book about ‘living a virtuous life’ to write a report on for a philosophy assignment. In short, I picked the thinnest book possible, as one could have expected from me, yet the topic of this book was an absolute nightmare.
Before I continue, let me shed a little light on the concept of a virtuous life. Virtues are qualities that we generally consider as being good, like having courage or being patient. Implementing these qualities into our lives seems like a good thing, and we can accelerate this implementation by looking at and learning from the people around us who (supposedly) are virtuous people.
These two sentences probably contain all the information I needed to extract from the selected book. However, handing in a book report of two sentences would likely have led to a below-average grade. I thus constructed numerous other sentences to arrive at a decent manuscript length, and I subsequently handed my report to my father. Why? Well, the poor man was granted the opportunity to help me with this specific report (most probably because my philosophy teachers were too lazy to invest time in me and, for once, actually teach me how to write a report).
So, I purposely sent my report to my father on the evening before the deadline hoping that he would give it his blessing without looking at it. Little did I know, however, that I would eventually go to bed at 5 o’clock in the morning that day. Come on daddy, keeping your son awake for that many hours, drinking a Leffe Triple with him on a week day while he is still underaged and never had alcohol in his life before, is that good parenting? (Disclaimer: I often embrace the concept of poetic freedom in the writing of my blog posts)
You might argue about whether offering me a beer at that age is good parenting, yet I think that we can all agree on the amazingness of my father taking the time for me and teaching me how to write reports. The latter is actually something that no one did before, that is still helping me in my current work, and, based on the countless reports of students I read in the past decade, that is something many others could benefit from. For those interested, my father’s first name is Bert, and he possibly has the same last name as I have…
At this point, one should be wondering how the above-mentioned events could lead to a (tiny) teenage trauma. Well, even with the help of my father, I still could not score higher than a seven (out of ten). I considered this as proof of my teachers hating me, and a part of me feels sorry for not getting an insufficient grade on my final exams which would have ended my teachers’ long streak of 100% success rates.
Anyway, when looking back on the entire situation, now fifteen years later, I wholeheartedly hope that my former classical language teachers have flat tires every day. Also, I am proud of my father’s knowledge, and I am grateful that he wanted to share some of it with me. (@Klont senior: I assume that my openness regarding this pride will allow me to reclaim the guest bedroom in the attic!?) And above all, I realize that “looking at and learning from the people around us who (supposedly) are virtuous people” (quote taken from this blog post, see last sentence of third paragraph) may have a negative impact on our mental health.
Well, well, well Frankie, you did it again! You constructed a lengthy and incoherent introduction for addressing a subject that seems only marginally related (at most). You maybe should have gotten even lower grades for your high school assignments, and the barely-average grades you received back then may possibly be attributed to your teachers’ goodwill rather than their hatred towards you. Who knows?
So, without further ado
I present to you
the topic of this blog post,
which is my concern for considering overworking as a virtue.
It is probably due to our ages and current career stages, but working in the evenings and weekends almost seems to be a rule rather than an exception for many of my friends and close colleagues. We are often tired when we see each other and frequently complain about our working hours. I sometimes even get the feeling that we are looking up to people who work more hours they get paid for, thus explaining why I referred to the book on living a virtuous life as this book teaches us to look at and learn from those around us who are doing it right.
But what if we are not capable of seeing what is right or wrong in this context?
I do not have the answers to key life questions like the one presented in the previous sentence, but I do have the solution for most of my daily-life issues. In three words: self-reflection, self-reflection, and self-reflection. And when it comes to overworking, I have ample years of experience with it, so previous self-reflection exercises allowed me to compose quite a collection of quick-fixes and more sustainable solutions. Please allow me to share some of them with you.
Periodization
A very important person in my academic and personal development once wrote to me in an e-mail that she compared work attitude with the bow of her cello. Quite some tension needs to be applied to the hairs of this bow when she wants to use it, but this tension needs to be released once she stops playing and puts the instrument back in its case. When I translate this example to my working life, I do allow myself to work ridiculous hours for longer periods of time. However, I should (roughly) define period lengths beforehand, and these periods may not follow each other too closely.
Getting your motives right
In the past period, I had multiple post-work conversations with my wife in which she apologized for working late that day. And every time I told her that she does not need to apologize for that and that she can work late as many times as she feels necessary. However, I believe that the motives for overworking should be right. For example, if her workload would be systematically too high, then working late is likely not a solution that will bring happiness in the long run. If, however, a colleague drops something on her desk just before going home and if she is passionate about it, I welcome her to tackle the corresponding issue (and celebrate it that evening with a warm bath or cold Leffe Triple).
Learning from your and someone else’s mistakes
I am not sure about much in my life, yet I am sure that I will continue making mistakes, also when it comes to overworking. I am actually happy to be imperfect, because I like to learn and to continuously work on an improved version of me. With respect to the latter, I am not only learning lessons from my own mistakes, as I like learning from someone else’s mistakes and, notably, from the lessons they learned from them. Thus, I am also learning from bad examples rather than purely focusing on the good ones, which I should be doing according to the book on living a virtuous life.
Oh well, I should probably admit that I never made it past page 100 (out of 175) of that book, so the author maybe have covered that strategy in one of the last chapters. I should probably also apologize to my dad for lying about how serious I took that specific assignment. But you know what? This entire experience made me a better person, and I am thankful for that.
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