Hello, friends! Well, I’m approaching the last few days of what I’ve been calling my job-switch sabbatical (which you can read more about in some of my recent posts on my Instagram page). I’ve had 3 weeks off in-between jobs, and I’m starting my new job on Monday!
In honor of this new start, I thought what better time than now to take a moment and share my work manifesto.
Let’s start with what you may be wondering at this point… what, exactly, is a work manifesto anyway?
Well, I just finished reading Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
In their book, Burnett and Evans write about “workviews” and how they help you with the task of designing your life. According to the authors, a workview answers questions like why do we work? what makes work good? what makes work meaningful?, and where does money fit in to the picture? A workview also includes more than just what you do as your job/what you do to make money.
A workview is a personal account of what matters to you about work. For me, I prefer the term work manifesto.
If you decide to try writing out a work manifesto for yourself, there are a few key things to keep in mind. First, a work manifesto is not just a list of what you want from work, or what you want to get out of work. A work manifesto is your definition of what good work means to you, why it’s worthwhile. If it helps, think of your work manifesto as your work philosophy.
I really enjoyed this book Designing Your Life, so I couldn’t help but do the exercise. It was helpful for me to reflect on what work means to me. I did this before I even started interviewing for my new job. And now that I have a new job, I figured what better time to share my work manifesto with my readers!
Without further ado…
My work manifesto
I used to believe in a career. I used to be obsessed with furthering my career.
Then, all that changed, and I realized that I couldn’t count on work to make me happy. I wanted a life that made me happy.
I still believe in careers, but now it’s closer to the job side of things. What I used to think of as a career, I now think about more as a job. I’m closer to the “it’s just a job” line of thinking.
What do I mean by this? Well, I love how Elizabeth Gilbert (author of one of my favorite books, Big Magic) talks about careers and jobs. She describes a job as something you do in order to pay your bills, and a career as a job you care deeply about.
I used to care deeply about my job. But I wasn’t happy. I was climbing the success ladder, reaching and reaching for the next rung without stopping to figure out if actually grabbing that rung was really what I wanted.
I used to look at work through a success lens. Work was meant to be prestigious, to make me look successful. Work was about what I could say to others at a party or in other social situations. And work was most of my life. My identity was wrapped up in my work.
Now, I realize that I want a life outside of work. I have a job, and I work to make money. To save for a secure future. To use my skill set. To fuel a life I don’t want to retire from. A life that includes work and non-work. Because to me, both are important. Work is a means to live life, to pursue passion projects, to nurture relationships.
So right now, at this stage of my life, my work is a job. My work is for income.
But I also feel a strong pull to do work that does not need to provide me with income (this blog, for one, which [to me] definitely counts as work).
I feel strongly that, overall, work should be fulfilling. Work should provide me with purpose. It’s important to me that I feel part of a team, and that I feel appreciated, for the work that I do. And that was partly what was missing from my last work situation, and what has fueled my current goal to downshift to part-time work, so that I have more time to pursue work that may or may not provide me with income.
However, I’ve had purpose, team, and appreciation at different stages of my working life. And that is something, in addition to other aspects of work, I’m trying to get back with this recent job switch I’m trying out.
Coherency
In Designing Your Life, the authors argue that the ultimate life goal is coherency. A coherent life is one in which the dots can be clearly connected between who you are, what you believe, and what you’re doing (your work). The authors write that if there’s a lack of coherency between what you believe and what you do, this is a recipe for disappointment and discontent.
This concept really struck a chord with me.
Mainly because there are elements of my work in the industry I’m currently in that conflict with certain aspects of my values and life goals.
As a medical writer (what I do to make money), I develop content for pharmaceutical companies on the drugs they are selling. Much of the work I do on a daily basis is relatively fulfilling, but I don’t always get to work on a life-saving drug. For example, for part of the time at my last job, I had to work on an aesthetic account, basically for a Botox competitor (Botox can do a lot of great things for certain diseases, but I was working on it from a wrinkle perspective…) This did NOT make me feel good on a daily basis. Not to mention that there’s always the underlying feeling when your client is a pharmaceutical company that you are simply helping them make more money and beat out their competitors (do we really need 20 different options that basically work in the same way for how to fix your wrinkles?! I think not…)
But this aspect of work, this coherency with my values, is also one that I think going down to part-time work will help with. There are absolutely certain aspects of my job that I love and that provide me great fulfillment (I have worked on life-saving, life-altering, non-wrinkle-correcting drugs). And this work I do in this particular industry provides me with a great salary. If I could just spend less time doing it, and at the same time have more time to do other work that I find more fulfilling and that provides me with more purpose, this may help with this coherency issue.
And who knows, maybe the fulfilling work I end up doing on the side that I don’t think will provide income will be paid someday, or maybe I find different medical writing work that is more fulfilling.
Either way, I’m acutely aware that another big chunk of my work manifesto is…
The importance of community
And when I say community, I mean both community with colleagues and teammates as well as with my local community.
In a perfect world, I’d actually like and respect most of the people I work with. After all, I work 40 hours a week right now, it’d be nice to actually enjoy my colleagues and the environment in which I work. This is another really big reason I decided to switch jobs.
And it’s also a big reason I choose to stay in a full-time job rather than switch to freelancing. Although I know freelancing isn’t out of the question, I worry about being lonely if I were a freelancer. I appreciate having work colleagues, people who speak the same language so to say, and I didn’t have this the last time I freelanced. But I know it could be an option if it comes to that, if there’s ever a time when full-time, W2 work isn’t sustainable. I know myself and if it is important to me, I can make it work.
It is also partly my desire to do work in my local community, and this desire is one of the main drivers of my part-time work goal. Downshifting to part-time work would free up more time for me to experiment with other pursuits where I could have a greater impact on my community (for example, coaching high school volleyball, becoming a hospice volunteer, becoming a health care advocate, etc.)
Closing thoughts
In Designing Your Life, the authors argue that being able to articulate your work philosophy makes it less likely that you will let others design your life for you.
Words like that always hit home for me. I spent the first part of my life working toward society’s goals. Sure, I thought I wanted the big fancy Professor job too, but it turns out I didn’t, and it wasn’t until I got off the hamster wheel, had more time in my life, and noticed what was happening around and inside me (that I was starting to have passions for things outside of work) that I realized there may be more to life than working all the time.
So anything, any exercise that helps me be the designer of my own life, well, I’m all for it.
The authors also remind us that this work manifesto will of course change over time. That’s normal! You don’t have to have everything figured out for the rest of your life. What’s important is what life is about for you right now. And creating a work manifesto can help with that.
What does work mean to you? If you don’t have some semblance of a work manifesto, I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know how it goes for you. I’d love to hear from you!