What you still believe about work
Readtime: 2.5 minutes
The Ocado grocery driver was early. I answered the door in my pyjamas.
I felt lazy in front of him. Which is a strange thing to feel at your own front door on a public holiday.
But he was probably thinking about the next drop, not about me.
Nonetheless, the feeling was already there. Something that said you should be dressed by now, you should be doing something.
I'd had a long week. The kind where you wake up and think it's Friday, only to find out it's Tuesday. And then a properly social weekend on top of it. Some music in the sunshine on the Friday. A long lunch with friends in Bristol on the Saturday. A BBQ with some other close friends on the Sunday. All of it good, and I'm grateful to have friends and experiences like these.
And then a public holiday on the Monday. Which, on paper, is a day for exactly this type of rest.
So why did I flinch when I heard the knock at the door?
What I was actually believing
I think this is what was sitting underneath it.
That being seen working is somehow more legitimate than being seen not working. Even on a public holiday. Even in front of a delivery driver who would have a varied work schedule.
I left my previous role nearly four years ago. I run my own business now and decide how my days look. I genuinely believe effective rest is part of the work. I tell my coaching clients this all the time.
And yet there I was at 10am, slightly embarrassed to be in my pyjamas in front of a stranger.
The belief is older than the job
I think the belief about visible work is older than any actual job I've had.
Probably picked up somewhere in my teens, and then my formative working years at KPMG, where it was work hard, play hard. When finishing a little early on a Friday felt like something you had to justify, regardless of how many hours you'd put in that week.
I thought I'd moved past most of this. Obviously I haven’t.
The kinds of tiredness that count
The other thing the flinch was telling me is that I have a hierarchy of legitimate tiredness, and I hadn't really noticed it.
The week of work felt like a good reason to need a slow morning. The weekend of friends, somehow, didn't. Tired from work is a good reason. Tired from friends is a confession.
Which is odd, because both of them had taken something from me. The week needed focus and attention. The time with friends needed energy and presence. I'd genuinely enjoyed all of it, and I genuinely needed the morning to recover.
But if someone had asked me the next day why I'd had a slow start to the week, I'd probably have mentioned the previous work week.
A bit of an asymmetry
There's an inherited story in there somewhere about what counts as proper tiredness.
Work is productive, so being depleted by it sits comfortably. Friends are leisure, so being depleted by them feels like a slightly embarrassing thing to admit. As if you should have been able to manage all that enjoyment without it costing you anything.
What I'm sitting with
I don't have a neat answer to this. I'm still thinking it through myself.
But the flinch at the door was useful. It told me something I wouldn't have noticed if I'd been at my desk at 10am. Two things, actually. That I still believe hard work is way more legitimate than needing proper rest. And that some kinds of tiredness register as legitimate and others don't, even when the ones that don't are often the ones that come from the parts of life we actually want more of.
I wonder what your version of this is. The moment that catches you off guard, and what it tells you about what you still believe about work that you thought you’d left behind. Reply and let me know if this has got you thinking.
Back to that morning. The shopping went in the fridge. I made another coffee. And the pyjamas stayed on for a bit longer.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. You might have noticed the newsletter is in a slightly different style the last couple of weeks. Less ‘how-to’, more thinking out loud. I'd love to know what you think. Please reply to this email and let me know.