Really – why are you working?
I think many people would relate to the Work Chronicles cartoon above (well worth subscribing to www.workchronices.com if you have a dry, cynical or sarcastic sense of humour – I have all three so I’m a big fan 😆).
What’s interesting though is that while the vast majority of us think we work because ‘we like paying our bills’ (myself included!) there are also usually other deeper reasons why we do the particular jobs we do. However, few people stop and consider those deeper reasons – which is a shame, because it’s actually very useful!
It’s very understandable most of us don’t stop and consider those deeper reasons – work and life in general are continually and increasingly demanding, overwhelming and exhausting, often leaving us little time for the luxury to stop and contemplate.
Bills keep coming. Rent/mortgage payments don’t stop. Life continues at a breakneck speed.
With all this happening, often the last thing we want to do at the end of an exhausting day is sit and think deeply about ‘life, the universe and everything’ – more like ‘Netflix life, sit in the ‘comfy sofa universe’, and escape everything and reality for a while’!
However, if you’re feeling that ‘2025 is a distant memory and here we are in the middle of March 2026 wondering what the hell happened to January and February’ then taking time for you – time for you to press the pause button, even temporarily, is probably exactly what you do need to do.
That’s exactly why I originally designed our extremely popular ‘Assessing, Planning and Progressing your Career’ program – and precisely why 20 people turned up with open minds to attend our recent 1-day ‘Assessing, Planning and Progressing your Career’ (AP&PYC) training program.
The program was an in-house program provided by a NSW Government agency – who listened to their people’s recent PMES survey results and gave those people the career development and contemplation time for each individual to consider where they are in their career (and personal) journey.
“I realised that although my manager and I had agreed about me working towards a promotion, I actually don’t want to get promoted! Doing this course made me realise I don’t want to the stress of playing politics at a higher level and that I actually deeply love managing my frontline staff and making a difference for them. When I stopped and thought about it I’m actually really happy where I am doing what I’m doing.”
That was the feedback from one participant who attended the AP&PYC course a little while ago, which I think speaks for itself. Important to realise that ‘progressing’ your career doesn’t always need to mean a promotion.
But often we get caught up in all that because that’s the expectation. That’s what managers often expect of people, and what people feel compelled to say in performance reviews and dutifully toil towards – because that’s what we think we need to do because we ‘like paying the bills’.
However, when we stop, reflect on and understand the deeper reasons why we do what we do (outside paying the bills), it energises and engages us – and it also gives us more strength to keep going when things get tough.
We’re often more willing to put in the hard work to achieve a career goal. Or we’re simply more engaged and happier staying where we are to keep paying the bills, and so approach work in a more positive and productive manner – good for employers but also good for us from a mental health perspective.
A participant from the recent course told me they’d done this program years ago, and it had helped them so much they came back to do it again (obviously we’ve updated the program in the meantime!).
During the first course, this person realised they weren’t where they wanted to be, and that they needed to take some ‘massive action’ to get to where they did want to be – in a completely new area of work that they realised was a deep passion and where they wanted to refocus their professional life.
They set themselves a goal during the AP&PYC course, and took the actions they’d agreed they needed to do to get there – also during the course.
This person left their organisation, enrolled in university to study a completely new area of expertise, spent time working to get qualified, then applied to come back into government in their new chosen field of expertise.
The person is now very happily working in that field in a management role – something they also realised was super-important to them. They are also busy, under-the-pump with work and life, but it’s easier to handle because they know this is what they deep-down wanted to do. This is their purpose.
However, despite what most self-help books and the myriad articles would have you believe, we don’t always have to arrive at that deep sense of life-purpose though. Nor can we always take massive action.
Simply being consciously aware that your purpose is simply ‘because you like paying your bills’ can also be just as powerful! That too can give you a deep sense of purpose, – ‘The Why’, the reason you come to work and keep doing what you do. And that’s also really ok!!
The question I’d then ask you to ask yourself to consider is “what does ‘liking paying your bills’ actually mean to you?”
Is it simply survival – a roof over your head and food on the table? Or is there a deeper meaning, like it allowing you to spend quality time with your family? Or keep that sense of personal status and/or personal achievement living where you do, or in the house you do, driving the car you do? Does it allow you a certain lifestyle that you actually really deeply value?
Then consider – what action can you take? As the picture says, “do what you can with what you have, where you are”. Small actions are better than no action – unless you proactively choose not to take action – then that’s a positive action in itself.
So often, whether we consciously realise it or not, it comes down to what you do truly value?
As part of the AP&PYC course, you get to take a Values and Motives Psychometric Assessment (VMI). This is often a good starting point to think about what you truly value, and why, and then translate that into what that means for your future career – and then make a plan and take action!
I’ve done the VMI myself, and it was quite revealing about what drives me!
For example, I’ve always known that one of my key drivers is that I need to feel I make a difference in the world. It’s why I do what I do, and why my mission is: “Make the world a better place through better, neuroscience-based leadership”, and why it is also purposefully a statement and an instruction!
However, one of the values in the VMI surprised me and I had to stop and think about it before I understood it. That value is ‘Achievement’, which came out as a middle-of-the-road score of 5 (on a scale of 1-10). There is no ‘right or wrong score, btw, it’s genuinely all about you.
Even though I know there’s no ‘wrong score’, I was still initially shocked at my score of 5 – having run my own company for over 19 years and working damned hard to grow it from scratch to a team of 35 trainers, coaches and staff, I thought I’d score much higher on Achievement!
However, when I sat down and thought about it, I understood the reason why. This is a huge motivating factor in helping me balance my mission, my health and my personal life with my work, running Southern Cross Coaching & Development. I’ll explain:
The description of the ‘Achievement’ scale is:
ACHIEVEMENT:
“High scorers on achievement tend to want to excel in everything they attempt, no matter what this might cost. With a desire to succeed, it is important to them to know that they are the best in their chosen field. Hard workers, they will be willing to make many personal sacrifices to achieve their success. High scorers require the respect and admiration of those they perceive as ‘worthwhile people.’ They will routinely set themselves difficult targets, finding greatest satisfaction from succeeding at the most difficult tasks.
Low scorers are not overly concerned with being the best. Not particularly desiring the respect and admiration of others, they will not let career ambitions interfere with personal and family life. Low scorers will tend to set themselves realistic career targets that they believe they can achieve without too much difficulty.”
Why did I score a 5? I ‘want to excel in everything I attempt’… I have ‘a desire to succeed’ and its very important ‘to know I’m the best in my chosen field’!
I’m a ‘hard worker’, and ‘routinely set myself difficult targets, finding greatest satisfaction from succeeding at the most difficult tasks’!!
However, what I realised is the bits I was not seeing:
“…excel in everything they attempt, no matter what this might cost.”
“Hard workers, they will be willing to make many personal sacrifices to achieve their success.
Low scorers are not overly concerned with being the best. Not particularly desiring the respect and admiration of others, they will not let career ambitions interfere with personal and family life. Low scorers will tend to set themselves realistic career targets that they believe they can achieve without too much difficulty.”
It dawned on me that while in many ways I am a very high achiever, this is balanced with a deep desire to spend quality time with my kids and my partner…
…and quality time looking after my physical health – I have autoimmune-related Ankolysing Spondyloarthritis and Psoriatic Arthritis, so moving, exercise and eating well are necessities for me to keep focussed on…
…and my mental health – I’ve been at the bottom of the ‘pit of despair’ and thankfully clawed my way out – and I do NOT want to go back there again. Ever!
Keeping those values in mind, it makes it much easier than it would otherwise be to make and justify decisions about my work and life balance – and more importantly be happier overall and feel less guilty about that. A real sense of purpose and a deep ‘Why’ I do what I do.
Conversely, I also know one of my driving values is to feel I’m making a difference in the world – so making time and putting in the effort in my business when I need to, even when it’s incredibly tough and I feel like cr@p and I really don’t feel like working hard comes a lot easier, and gives me the strength to get on with things.
It gives me the motivation for, as Winston Churchill said: “when you’re going through hell – keep going!”
So I hope you can see that getting clear on your personal values is a critical part of assessing where you want to be in your career and what you want or need to do to get there – that’s why it’s a core part of the AP&PYC program.
If you want to give your team time to stop, reflect, re-energise and get clear on their motives and values and give them time for themselves to get clearer on what drives them and what they want in their career, and help re-energise them and give them clarity, get in touch with us now.
For more information go to Assessing, Developing, Planning and Progressing your Career program.
