What's Ideal is Not Real

What makes work worth doing? A great chance for improvement? Higher pay with lots of benefits? A just and fair promotion requirements? A nice workplace with hi-tech tools? A good boss? Colleagues with the spirit of team work? A good camaraderie? A good cause? A meaningful impact?

All of those! But the fact is, we can't have them all. No workplace is ever ideal ....no career is ever perfect ...  no work is ever easy. That's my theory, so far.

Let us check some insights to clarify things.

Based on the research conducted by Harvard Business Review, people's everyday work lives are greatly enriched when they make progress at work that they find meaningful. 

I agree 100%. Being an IT Trainer, helping learners to prepare for their future makes everyday, doing  even the most mundane things, worth my while.  Watching my trainees march during graduation is one such great accomplishment. Knowing that they got nice careers after they graduated makes all the difference in the world.

This means that the satisfaction of helping, contributing, experiencing, discovering and understanding the job's worth and our worth ... its overall impact ... is very essential.

But it should not end there. The satisfaction of doing something for others should also be paired with the satisfaction of having done something for ourselves. 

Based on my experience, observation and perception, the following are things that are essential ingredients to help make our work worth doing:

• Purpose. A good cause is always needed. We need to know why we need to do what we do so that we can do it the right way at the right place and time, and with the right people. As Rick Warren in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, said, "God is always more interested in why we do something than in what we do."
• Interest. We need to enjoy what we do. As Maxim Gorky once said, "When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is duty, life is slavery."
• Salary & Benefits. Simple basic pay for a start with a promise of huge returns in the long run still matters. Our life won't be greatly enriched when our financial progress is hindered by low pay, no benefits and zero promotion despite exemplary performance. Would we be able to say we're happy and contented when we can't afford even the simple joy of owning even the cheapest house, the comfort of driving our own car, and the pleasure of taking a vacation once in a while?
• Trust. The trust of your peers and your boss can help us propel our way to success. Close supervision is only for dummies. For as long as the job is well defined and delegated; performance criteria and deadlines properly set, we sure don't need our boss or our peers to constantly check our work like a shadow where every move they make will surely take our breath away.
• Teamwork. Goodwill and lighthearted rapport between and among peers can make any workload lighter. Working as a team always makes a lot of difference. Working with snakes in the corporate ladder is another story.
• Environment. Nice and safe working environment is always heaven. Who would want to work everyday at a tupsy-turvy and dirty office with outdated tools? Not me!
• Acknowledgment. Even a simple pat in the back whenever we did something commendable will do. It doesn't take a genius to acknowledge and commend a performing worker. There are many ways to acknowledge good performance, from a sincere (and I mean sincere) "Thank You" or "Congratulations"   for a specific job well done to granting the highest level, agency-specific honors and establishing formal cash incentive and recognition award programs. It just need a performance-oriented and selfless (not self-centered) boss to make it happen.
• Motivation. We all need to be motivated. Who doesn't? Kill  this motivation and we won't go much further. The only question is ... who will motivate us when everyone else needs to be motivated? 
• Outcome. The end result of our labor matters so much. Output which can only mean meaningless numbers without meaningful results is not good. Our work should have some remarkable impact in the lives of others, as well as our own. But then, there's no amount of knowing the impact we caused on others' lives not unless we do extensive research asking for their precious testimonies. As Jay Asher said, “No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.” 
• Opportunity. The opportunity to be in the right place and at the right time is always needed. And luck really has a lot to do with it. I agree with Bill Gates when he said , "I was in the right place, at the right time, and luck had a lot to do with it".   Based on my own experience, we can never grow much further when we're misplaced, displaced or out-of-place. That's what we call a pure streak of bad luck LOL.

Getting all these ingredients will surely ensure a great serving of heaven at work. The question is, where in the world can we ever find them all bundled up together? In which heaven's one-stop-shop will we ever find them?

Perhaps, in every aspect of life, be it in love or at work, what's ideal is not really real!

---oOo---

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, September 7, 1903