Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

“It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself”. Charles Baudelaire

Approaching 30 years working in the world of work (I’m either pushing new recruits in the front door, helping leavers elegantly exit out the back door or generally reviewing who we have in the building) I was very much coming to two conclusions 1) People hate work and 2) It’s all just a game anyway. Then whilst idling through “The Week” magazine I came across the quote above. He’s right is Charlie and I had it wrong. In front of me lay the fruits of my “amusing myself” labour for the Covid day. Yesterday’s crossword is still yet to be filled in (I scanned and know a few but I’m delaying the joy of filling in for the right 5 minutes), 2 remotes with access to Sky, Prime, Netflix and there’s still not enough choice, 4 empty espresso cups (I’m jacked) and the laptop seems to think I, at the age of 51, might be about to click “buy now” for the Amazon purchase of an XBOX complete with Crazy Golf game?! Also the Cat looks like she’s put on 3 stone in 4 weeks – I must stop feeding her. 

What had always intrigued me when observing people in work (particularly when the boss is out of earshot) is everyone’s overwhelming desire not to be there and, what’s more, to discuss the joys of what we do when we are not in work. From the checkout at Tesco “When you on your break Jean?”, the Peter Kay taxi driver question “what time are you on till?” or the obligatory hairdresser question “when are you off on your holidays?” I was of the opinion this was because people hate work and would always be watching the clock for when they can get out of it. A further eye opener was the belief that this attitude was only held by people with mundane and often repetitive jobs but as I’ve gained more access to board rooms and senior management teams the more I realised everyone looks forward to the end of the day,  Friday, and holidays with the same enthusiasm and vigour. 

The simple fact is that Sapien has the problem of a big brain and a very low boredom threshold. Whilst it still takes a pack of lions up to 3 hours to take down one unfortunate Zebra, we developed in relatively next to no time, a system that gets a Domino Pizza in 20 minutes. So food and shelter generally speaking we boxed off quickly and we simply needed stuff to do to keep our brains active. And whether we are friction welding drill bits, driving a wagon, researching how to decarbonise society, devising a marketing strategy to get scented candles in everyone’s homes or leading the free world, we work as the perfect antidote to break up the time sitting on the couch, iPhone in hand wondering what it’s all about. 

With the exception of the truly idle (god bless em) I’ve realised we actually work because we want to and as so many lottery winners find out we have to do something with a purpose/end result/value to distinguish from the self amusement. We think we do it for the money and of course there is truth in that. But the money buys the tools of self amusement which in a cyclical way justifies the toll of our labour. So you see it is a game!

When we are all back we can once again look forward to not looking forward to Monday morning’s 06:30 “oh sh*t” roll call. We can revel in the 2 weeks before the holiday count down and simply smile at the clock at 16:31 knowing there is less than half an hour before we head off to the “amusing myself” factory. I do wonder however how long it will be before the treadmill finds it’s timing again and how long we walk it before all this is a lesson we simply forget or choose not to remember. 

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