Robin Sieger Blog

It is a simple enough question but at the same time offers a limited number of responses. If current popular research is to be believed then it appears that 65% of the working population have no purpose behind working other than to earn money. Their job becomes a means to an end.

I have friends from my school and university days who would whole-heartedly agree that their careers were the results of a series of random meetings, opportunities and events. In fact more people believe their careers are more a matter of chance than choice.

So if I may ask a bold question of you, in terms of your professional career have you realised or are you on track to realising your professional ambitions? The reason I mention this is due to the fact in the past three weeks I have had a number of conversations with people who are unhappy with their working lives. I don’t mean they have had a bad week, missed their targets, have had a falling out with their boss, or anything like that. They have come to a point in their lives where they recognise that they are not happy with the direction that their working life is taking them.

When I ask them why don’t they change it? The common replies are, “I have family to support”, “I won’t get this kind of money if I go it alone” and curiously the most common and the one which I had never suspected is “I don’t know what I want to do”.

I cannot tell them what they should do with their lives, my advice, no matter how well intentioned will lack one vital ingredient. It is this ingredient that I believe the majority of those who feel lost or trapped in their professional lives have either disconnected from, or as is more likely never really connected to. When I meet those who ask me for my advice I always give them the same thought, which is “What is your true desire?” I don’t ask it in some quasi-mystical wise monk of the ancient temple manner, whereby they get a moment of instant enlightenment. Rather I want them to tell me what they love doing, what excites them. By telling me what excites them I can then ask them further questions as they become more animated. I can feel their enthusiasm and desire become manifest in front of me. I then ask them to find the aspect of their work where they can find a personal sense of purpose and meaning.

For the majority of people work is a means to an end, it gives them the money to live and prosper, to have choices and create future financial security for themselves. Yet no matter what you do, no matter how humble or how grand, you will find that what you do impacts directly and indirectly on the lives of others.

I had a couple of awful jobs when I was a student, one in particular I remember due to the mind numbing boredom, and endless repetitive nature of the task. I was working in an industrial bakery, which had a conveyor belt onto which a metal tray had to be added every three seconds, onto these trays the bread was placed prior to entering the oven. If a tray was missed chaos ensued. Because of the size of the trays they had to be manually placed. Add to that, the heat of the ovens, which as the conveyor belt feeder, I could not escape. At the time I realised that this boredom could quickly lead to an accident, and sure enough it did, I nearly got my hand caught in the belt gearing when some fabric on my boiler suit got snagged. I hit the stop button. The machines all ground to a halt.

Once the jam was fixed we started up about 20 minutes later and once again I returned to my position, only this time I was paying attention, I was aware that I could have lost some fingers, that I brought the production line to a stand-still and boring as my job was to me, it mattered to the process of supplying many of the shops in Glasgow with their bread the following morning. I saw a bigger picture. I worked there for three months and never made another mistake. I didn’t love the job, in fact I hated it, but I also learnt a second lesson that has served me well.

During my time in this factory I met the regular workers who, had not finished school, were uneducated, unskilled manual workers, who had hard lives and few choices, they were generally friendly and good humoured, very philosophical about life, and didn’t identify with the job they were doing. They were not defined by the job they did, rather the family they belonged to, the soccer teams they supported and the neighbourhoods they came from. I learnt never to identify with your job, it is not who you are, rather it is what you do, and the more we can do it to the best of our ability, and remember it does matter to others, then we can find the purpose that appears to have eluded so many.

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