{"id":39,"date":"2020-05-12T21:43:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T21:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/?p=39"},"modified":"2020-05-15T22:47:47","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T22:47:47","slug":"idle-hands-are-the-devils-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/idle-hands-are-the-devils-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Idle hands are the devil’s workshop."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself\u201d. <\/em>Charles Baudelaire<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Approaching 30 years working in the world of work (I\u2019m 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\u2019s all just a game anyway. Then whilst idling through \u201cThe Week\u201d magazine I came across the quote above. He\u2019s right is Charlie and I had it wrong. In front of me lay the fruits of my \u201camusing myself\u201d labour for the Covid day. Yesterday\u2019s crossword is still yet to be filled in (I scanned and know a few but I\u2019m delaying the joy of filling in for the right 5 minutes), 2 remotes with access to Sky, Prime, Netflix and there\u2019s still not enough choice, 4 empty espresso cups (I\u2019m jacked) and the laptop seems to think I, at the age of 51, might be about to click \u201cbuy now\u201d for the Amazon purchase of an XBOX complete with Crazy Golf game?! Also the Cat looks like she\u2019s put on 3 stone in 4 weeks – I must stop feeding her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What had always intrigued me when observing people in work (particularly when the boss is out of earshot) is everyone\u2019s overwhelming desire not to be there and, what\u2019s more, to discuss the joys of what we do when we are not in work. From the checkout at Tesco \u201cWhen you on your break Jean?\u201d, the Peter Kay taxi driver question \u201cwhat time are you on till?\u201d or the obligatory hairdresser question \u201cwhen are you off on your holidays?\u201d 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\u2019ve 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s all about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the exception of the truly idle (god bless em) I\u2019ve 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we are all back we can once again look forward to not looking forward to Monday morning\u2019s 06:30 \u201coh sh*t\u201d 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 \u201camusing myself\u201d factory. I do wonder however how long it will be before the treadmill finds it\u2019s timing again and how long we walk it before all this is a lesson we simply forget or choose not to remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBuy Now\u201d <click><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself\u201d. Charles Baudelaire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":45,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/devil-pointing5l-1-scaled-e1589555253914.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.croft-associates.com\/original\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}