Work, a four letter word --? (extract from 'A Freerange Approach to Work', available under 'books' from this site)
The newly-installed, re-cycled sectional concrete garage is now the grandly entitled ‘micro-holding logistics operation centre’ from which the micro-holding workers, namely ourselves, sally forth. It’s reasonable size enables it to be a fuel store too – mainly wood, but also some coal, some kindling sticks and some paper logs. There's space enough to chop kindling wood and to chop logs, as well as store all manner of tools and equipment- necessary and sometimes not always so necessary – but you never know.
Besides the fuel, there’s quite a variety of wood lengths – never know when you might need them - there’s the reserve hover mower plus a couple of strimmers and an electric hedgecutter, there’s a couple of electric chainsaws plus a brand new unused motor chainsaw, a good buy at half the retail cost which will no doubt see good use in the future, there’s pickaxes, sledgehammers, sickles, smaller axes, small tools, the big main axe, various canisters of differing types of oil, a sacktruck- useful tool, wood saws, all valued part of the 'labours of love', but collectively not worth a heck of a lot in monetary terms.
Work can be pleasurable------??!
‘Work is a four-letter word’ – so say some, and to be honest, to anyone having to work long hours doing tiring, repetitive work, and/or work in a 'pressurised' workplace, it may well probably be not too much fun, and could likely wear a person down over time. But, what about the ‘dignity of work’, the fact that work enables people to ‘make their contribution’, possibly/probably an important need for many, and possibly above all, putting the ‘filthy lucre’ question aside for a moment, what about the pleasure and satisfaction that can come by (some) work?
Stone masons of yesteryear, for instance, having fashioned and crafted their raw material into functional and even at times quite beautiful structures, (brought home recently looking at some gorgeous stone canal bridges whilst on a walk), must have then leaned back and looked at their creations with much joy and pride, getting a real positive 'intrinsic' return from their work, even if their material return might have been a touch more meagre. The sandstone arches of the canal bridges and the curves built into the bridges were really beautiful.
Now that so much work is office and computer based, could it be that there is a danger of losing the joy and satisfaction in creating, or mending even, things with one's own hands? (which many undoubtedly still do, of course). Ian Anderson of ‘Jethro Tull’ group fame and now also a ‘serious’ farmer, described on a TV programme the unique feeling of satisfaction experienced after a long, hard, dusty, sweaty day harvesting, now relaxing over a beer with his fellow harvesters. Yin and yang – the prolonged work efforts fortify and amplify the experience of relaxation and satisfaction - ?
Only fools and horses----?
Work, of course for many – most?- in a modern culture fills a pressing need to gain access to money with which to buy food, shelter, fuel and so on, the necessities of life plus hopefully some ‘luxuries’.
The birds here in the orchard just outside the window are beavering away- beavers must be hard workers – raiding the bird feeders and the fatballs avidly, filling a very urgent need. After a hard and late winter there’s not much grub for them in nature’s larder now at the end of March. It’s cold, a strong wind blowing and it’s raining, yet here they are, hard at it, part of their natural behaviour pattern to seek food.
Man, though, is part of nature and has needs which have to be met, so presumably, it could be said that in an unaffected, unconditioned state, activity to meet needs is a natural behaviour of man, and the fact that ‘work’ may have in some parts become a ‘contaminated’ four-letter word could then be down to other things, such as too much of it, not enough interest content in the work and too pressurised a work situation, for instance.
The American motivation researcher, Douglas MacGregor, was saying as much some years back – that is, by rights, work is a natural activity to meet important needs, so if people aren’t keen (i.e, motivated) to work, maybe there’s something amiss with the work situation- they might not just be idle b’s.
A fairly recent large survey of UK employees revealed that a large majority of them felt uncared for and undervalued, which could, the argument goes, represent a major opportunity area for employers in which to pay attention, improving this factor for staff, then reaping in return a harvest of longer-term higher staff productivity, fewer problems and enhanced employee loyalty and commitment.
Why, though, has modern ‘work’ produced such a strong negative employee reaction – after all, from the above, isn’t it mean’t to be a potentially natural human behaviour? Worklife does seem to have become more competitive, more fast-paced, more ‘driven’ in a strongly profit-focused culture and quite possibly less ‘sociable’, with workplaces being now perhaps generally less amenable environments with cultures of ambition and internal competitiveness. A feature labelled ‘presenteeism’ has been noted – people staying at work for long periods due to anxiety about what might happen in their absence. Much work these days seems too to be 'prescribed' by the present culture - how much, for instance, is the concept of 'innovation' used as an almost unassailable attribute of modern work activity, and by default relegating other, perhaps more traditional or 'regular' efforts to the second division?
‘Love’s labours lost------?’
Vocational work, 'labours of love' – such concepts too no longer seem to feature significantly in the modern money orientated culture, where work performance is linked to targets, followed by financial reward, so work effort then becomes directly (and narrowly-?) related to reward. The traditional arguments against such incentivisation-orientated staff management also don’t seem to be heard too much nowadays. If you associate amounts of money with amounts of work, you condition people, so it goes, to then make work efforts only in response to money offerings, so you commit yourself as an employer to such a culture and potentially by default undermine and devalue natural human motivation, impacting too, presumably, on levels of individual self-responsibility. Not all necessarily the best news maybe for freerangers, who might well want to exercise self-responsibility and practice self-motivation.
Various motivation gurus have also argued that any motivationary effect that money has tends to be short-term, so then more money then has to be offered for a further incentive effect, leading to a snowball effect, then leading, for a firm, to high, uneconomic labour costs over time, whilst conditioning people to respond just to money prompts, thereby again limiting any chance of tapping in to natural human motivation.
From the individual’s point of view, and therefore relevant to freeranging, such a system seems to be based on a presumption, which is along the lines of ‘people work for money'- full stop. Could this be, though, a considerable simplification, a single-dimensioned approach, against which multi-dimensional people, such as freerangers, instinctively react?
Does such a seemingly simplistic approach, though, then treat people at a too low, 'one-dimensional' level, and certainly for those of a vocational nature, as many freerangers could well be, at a level inappropriate to match their own self-worth and self-responsibility need levels, which could then help to explain why limitations and problems can occur-?
From the freeranger perspective then, 'control culture' work management systems which cut accross individual motivation and self-responsibility, whether by strong financial influence and/or by a plethora of 'control' measures, could seem to be problematic, not least in terms of producing work situations potentially unconducive to self growth, and impacting then presumably, in a potentially limiting self-worth manner.
Ah well, back to practical 'labours of love', although looking at the weather, it could yet be 'work'.
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