Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Occupation - To Occupy One's Time with Meaningful Work

Ever dread going back to work after a vacation? You know there is going to be a mountain of emails to go through and actual work to complete. With that it's enough to make a man jump on a plane and go back where he came from.

A job is an occupation. To occupy one's time with meaningful endeavour. Well...basically to trade our time and efforts for pay to provide for food, clothes and roof.

That's the basic. Now, I am thinking its gotta be more than that. Imagine if you are working long hours, trying to meet deadlines and trying to find solution to problems...heck, you deserve more! Right? The fact is you do deserve more but then, does your boss give a damn?

Think of it as a trade. A barter if you would. You trade time and effort for money. How can we get more work done with the same amount of time and effort? Now if you can do that then you have more leverage to trade for a better pay.

Life is a constant state of motion. Its like the book, "Who Moved my Cheese?". We have to be constantly aware of our environment and ourselves in order to adapt to our surroundings. Hence to occupy our time meaningfully we have to constantly move ourselves to improve ourselves...lest we fall into a state of infinite loops...blaming society for our misfortunes.

Rudyard Kipling aptly said in the last part of his poem 'If'...

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With 60 seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And - which is more - you will be a Man, my son!