When you hate your job, your biggest goal in life is just to get through the day. Some days that climb around the numbers of the clock seems insurmountable. It’s a horrible way to live, but it’s a horrible place to work. You can get out of the daily spiral and enjoy your days. Here are some ways to not just get through the day, but to enjoy your days.
When you have the luxury of looking away from the monitor, you’re probably tempted to watch the clock. Or maybe you work in a newer office. If so, have you noticed there are no clocks on the wall anymore?
Is that intentional? Did they purposely omit timepieces from office decor to remove the potential distraction of Closing Time? Granted, the time of day is at the top right of most Macs, the bottom right of most PCs and at the top of everyone’s phone.
There are much better ways to remove time from the equation, but not hanging a timepiece on a wall in front of everyone seems like an easy solution.
Moments are , Dreaded, Not Seized or Cherished
When you hate your job, moments are not seized or cherished.
The diems are not carped. Get it? Carpe diem?
Days are suffered, endured.
Moments drag on and on.
That little hand seems frozen in its position. The big hand is the biggest slacker in the building. One might think the big hand doesn’t move unless watched. Then it’s like watching grass grow at the glacier race.
Point Your Face to the Cloud Race
Since I brought it up, I recommend you get up right now. Go outside. Find a patch of grass and spend ten minutes watching it grow. If it’s brown, it probably won’t grow. Still, I’d keep an eye on it for ten minutes or so just to be sure. If you can’t find a patch of grass near the office, watch a Cloud Race.
My money’s on the bunny with the parasol, but once I saw a cloud that looked like a dragon with Groucho Marx glasses that kept right up with the bunny and the broom.
The parasol turned into a broom. And you thought watching a cloud race sounded like a waste of time.
Or maybe there’s a starfish flexing its biceps like in the image right here.
Can cloud shapes help you get through the day when you hate your job?
How to Get Through the Day And a Paradox of Time.
How can every day waiting for the whistle that finally sends you sliding down the brontosaurus tail to freedom seem to take weeks within a day when every Thanksgiving Day we ask, “Doesn’t it see like Christmas was just last week?” Then sarcastically, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” with a look around the table at the ones gazing longingly into their phone screens.
The paradox had me baffled and a little paranoid for years until Gretchen Rubin cleared it up.
“The days are long and the years are short.”
– Gretchen Rubin
Time drags on, and it speeds away.
“The future is slow and the past is fast.”
How do you get through the day without wasting a week, month or year?
The Box That Binds the Paradox
Just getting through day wastes the weeks months and years. Unwrap that box and free up your time.
How do we do that?
Jim knows.
“Most people are just trying to get through the day. Sophisticated people get from the day.”
-Jim Rohn
You gotta do things I mention over and over. Or that I will mention over and over.
You have to:
- pay yourself first
- build and maintain boundaries.
- Escape into the moment, not from it
Your job is temporary. All jobs are temporary. Your body is permanent. I should add that your mind is permanent. Too.
So let’s get to it.
How to Get Through the Day
Watch the Grass Grow and the Cloud Race.
Did you think I was just enjoying in a little self-indulgence with that Groucho Marx dragon thing? I was not.
Go outside and watch the clouds.
Look for shapes.
Can’t see shapes?
Good. You’re not just watching two little sticks spinning around in circles of numbers. You’re focusing. Turning wheels. Priming pumps.
Find some shapes, even if you have to take some liberties like they obviously did with the constellations.
Seriously, that W looks nothing like Cassiopeia.
Does the lady in that image look like Cassiopeia?
Incidentally, you can do this with stars too, but clouds are better. Clouds are more like life. They pass by. They change as they pass by. Then there are more clouds. Or few clouds. Clouds are impermanent. Absorb that importance.
Absorb that impermanence.
Every stressed-out shmuck that thinks his access to some server is the most pressing crisis on this big, blue and green quaffle is just another cloud that will pass by.
Every menial task your boss gives you and will probably take credit for is just another bunny with Groucho glasses that will drift off and turn into a turtle. The chocolate, pecan and caramel cluster, not the amphibian.
But Shayne!
You live in North Texas. You yourself can go months without the hope of a cloud. Am I supposed to watch the sun race?
No! Don’t stare directly at the sun. You’ll damage your eyes.
Find a patch and watch the grass grow.
Find a tree and watch the leaves dance.
Find a mound and watch the ants work.
Look familiar?
Watch people around the office.
What are they doing?
- Staring at their phones to escape the moment or chase that dopamine?
- Rushing to the next crisis?
- Sucking on a cancer stick because the stress is that bad?
Look at their posture.
Are their necks and shoulders doing hunch thing from too much time staring down at phones?
Do you have that? During your next hand-washing meditation, have a look in the mirror and check your posture.
If it’s turning you into Quasimoto, is your phone really smart?
Mindfulness is the Best Way to Get Through the Day.
Seizing the day. Relishing the day. You don’t have to meditate or summon your chi. Just be in moments.
Like Lin-Manuel Miranda said in Hamilton.
He was talking about fighting in a battle, but your day seems like a battle sometimes doesn’t it? A weird bizarro battle where all your biggest enemies are the people on your side. Rat Race was never intended to be complementary.
Get out of the rat race and watch the cloud race. Check out 5 Sneaky mindfulness triggers.
For extra help and practice remaining mindful, give my 7 Days to Crushing Job Misery email course a try.
This is Going to Ge a Living Post
Download this printable to remind you and come back here, because there’s going to be much more.
If it is a battle, you and I are in it to win it.
[special]”If you got skin in the game, you stay in the game,
but you don’t get a win unless you play in the game.
Oh, you get love for it.
You get hate for it.
You get nothing if you wait for it.“
-Lin-Manuel Miranda[/special]
“The longer the wait, the greater the weight.”
-Stephen King from The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
How about your job? If you hate your job, how do you get through the day? What drives you the most crazy about your job?