Part III: On Work

This is the third installment in our rest-play-work series. 

I’ve been working for as long as I can remember. When I was young it was walking beans, detasseling corn, or mowing yards. As a teenager I worked in restaurants and bars (that’s a whole other story I guess). In fact, for about a month each summer I’d clocked nearly 90 hours a week. My first big fight with my mom in college? It was over getting a job during the first week of the semester - she thought I should focus on my studies. 

But I liked work. Initially it was the money. Growing up, my parents didn’t give us a ton of money, so if we wanted something - lunch out or a new outfit, we had to figure out how to pay for it. As an adult, I still like the money (mostly spending it) but it was almost a challenge to see how much work I could fit into a day, a week, a year. Like trying to run just a little longer, or little faster, I tried to work a little more, a little harder. I pushed the outer limits of the calendar. It was all kinds of work - the physical labor of stripping floors or painting a recent renovation or the mental labor of enrolling in another course or taking on a new writing project. I loved the feeling of falling asleep at night, exhausted from a productive day. And even more than that, I loved waking up each morning with a fresh, full to-do list. I loved being busy.

There are parts of this world that seem to praise this part of me, the part that loves to work and there parts that seem to chastise it. A scroll on social media or a walk through the self-help aisle can produce a whiplash of advice to “do less” but “hustle more.” We’re supposed to “put in the work” but “take a break.” As a proud millennial I am told that I am simultaneously lazy but also brainwashed by the evils of capitalism, trapped in a life of production by my protestant work ethic. So which is it? Should I be doing more? Or less? Am I another overworked and exhausted American? Or am I undisciplined and uncommitted?

Neither. It’s not about sweeping generalizations of doing more or less. It’s about finding the right amount of “do.” Because the triad of work, play, and rest only balances when we have the right amount of each.

We understand this in training. Rest days are important for growth. Play is important for endurance, but you don’t get results without work - real, gritty, hard work. Without work, the whole thing collapses, and I think in the world of bio-hacks, efficiencies, and “7 tips to success in X,” work has gotten a bad rep. It seems like we’re both overcommitted and trying to avoid work at all costs with quick fixes and miracle cures. Maybe that’s exactly the problem, when we do too much we end up desperately seeking to do too little. Or we end up wrapped up in all the work that never seems to get us anywhere. 

Ultimately we have to find the right amount - and the right type - of “do” - and the right amount for us. Not our siblings or our peers, not the woman in the impressive instagram profile - us. The amount and type of work we need should be directly tailored to us - our capabilities, needs, time, personalities, and goals.

A lot has been written about work across disciplines, but one of my favorite frameworks comes from a sociologist. He writes about the alienation of workers from their craft, and that this has led to workers not reaping all the benefits, all the richness that can come from work. He goes on to describe these three rewards as the reward of rest, the reward of accomplishments, the reward of work itself. 

Runners inherently know the reward of not just rest, but the promise of rest. The idea of sitting down, of stopping at an aid station or finish line is, oftentimes, is all we need to push through those last miles. That rest that comes after an ultra-marathon? Cannot be beat. The deep, unmoving, body aching relief from moving is euphoric. Sure we know rest isn’t only a reward for work, but it sure is a sweet one. 

LIkewise, we understand the reward of accomplishments. Finishing a major goal race or setting a new time or distance PR - those moments are what we visualize at 5am or in the middle of yet another long Saturday run. The belt buckle, we imagine it in our hand as we close the tab early on Friday. We know how good it feels to check something off a bucket list, to reach the literal and metaphorical finish line. 

But that third reward of work - the work itself, that’s the sweet spot for me. That’s the quiet reward, almost secret, the reward that’s just for you, that’s always there when you lace up your tennis shoes or power up a laptop. It’s not dependent on rest or external reward, it’s the reward itself. That’s the work I feel as I methodically chop vegetables or roll out my mother’s pie dough. The work at the end of those “junk miles.”  It is the reward you get without cheering crowds or medals, the work you do without thinking of stopping, the work that transfixes you, into that flow state, where your brain and body are working in complete sync, moving through the work as if you were born to. This is the work that is so often, to the rest of the world, unneeded and unnecessary. But to the soul of the individual - it is a lifesource, alternates of nourishment and challenge. It’s the work of mothers, the edges of which are so blurred with rest and play that perhaps it’s all three. It’s the work that connects your person to your product. This work happens when you create a gift for the rest of the world, and feel connected to all three. 

And that’s what hobbies so often are - work that we feel connected to and which connects us to the world. Maybe those things make us money, maybe they just make us happy, or maybe this work gives us something more important than either - this work gives us meaning. 

Years ago, during my transcon run, I wrote about the quote from Scott Jurek that “Sometimes you just do things.” It was the only answer I could come up with, the last answer I could come up with, to the question “why are you doing this?” Now, I understand that idea a little better. Sometimes you do things because doing them feels good, someone you do work because you like it. We’re pretty caught up in the ideas of production and progress here in the Western world. We monitor our growth with metrics, measuring ourselves against timelines and goals set years before - and there is certainly value in that. I love a good goal, and I love working towards it, but like rest and play, we cannot discount the value of hedonism. We can, and should work without promises of accolades or other rewards. We can’t ignore, we shouldn’t ignore the idea that sometimes, the work itself is the reward. 

And we can all find that type of work, the work that promises the reward of rest, of goals, and of the work itself, and if we can balance that work with rest and play - then we don’t need to constantly question ourselves - should we be doing less or more - for then, when we’ve struck that harmony, we’ll be too busy working to ruminate, to question and doubt ourselves, our talents, and our work. We’ll be flowing through work, play, and rest with intention, confidence, and the reward of a life balanced by all three.