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If it Feels Like Work, You're Doing it Wrong!

By Gary Lockwood

Where does it say that you can have fun only when you're away from work. Come on; lighten up a bit. Far too many people spend five days of their week waiting for the weekend where they can have a good time.

For the past 150 years, we have been taught that time on the job must be non-stop hard work in order to be most productive. We heard messages such as "Work really hard and you will be rewarded." Or, "You're here to work, not play around. Get busy."

No wonder so many people started to look toward their time away from work as a respite from hard labor and grim pressure. Days off and weekends began to be treasured as time to enjoy ourselves, relax and have a little fun. Trouble is, many people now feel they have to take fewer days off to stay caught up with increasing work demands. Working weekends has become standard practice for many over-worked business professionals.

So where do we have room to have fun? How do we have the time to enjoy the work? Let's examine this from a couple of different angles.

First, let's step back a few paces and take a bird's eye view of your business or job. Are you really doing something that you enjoy? Does your job or your enterprise give you satisfaction? Are you fully using your natural talents and aptitude?

How do you discover your natural talents?

• First, write down a list of those things that you do that seem easy for you. Often, the tasks that are easy for us are those where we have a special aptitude.
  
• Next, make a list of those things you do where time just seems to fly by. This is a good clue to activities where you have natural talent.
  
• Finally, write all the activities that make you happy. These are the tasks you would do just for yourself, with no promise of gain, just because they're fun, interesting and fulfilling.