Chapter 2 – Redefining ‘Work’ as ‘Vocation’ and deconstructing the ‘Work Life Balance’ myth!

While we were working at the Pentagon, we had a massive bullpen where our staff worked to keep up supplying the field with the materials needed to renovate the building.  This area was packed with maybe 15-18 people at any given time all reviewing submittals, coordinating with subcontractors, etc.  I posted various plaques in the middle of the space that had some motivational sayings.  One that I liked a lot, related to Work.  It was titled ‘Eastern European Work Ethic’.  I wish I had saved it when I left the project, but I left it there and it is gone. If I recall it correctly, it said, “When your Tired, Work, When you are Hungry, Work, When you are Sick, Work…..”  You get the point.   

The word ‘Work’ has always been around my family.  I have mentioned earlier that my grandfather had a saying, “You never saw a man drown in his own sweat.”  When I discuss this saying with people now, they view it with disdain or just do not understand it. 

My family came from a long line of people that struggled through life.  School of hard knocks ruled, and hard work was what got them through it.  Work always provided.  Education and social systems certainly did little or nothing to help the family.  Even when they had lost everything through circumstances like wars that tore everything from us, communist invasions of countries which forced mass migration to escape oppression or illnesses that produced a drastic challenge in life, the pursuit of work allowed us to survive and endure. 

The attitude about hard work certainly was defined by the family culture. I hope you have a family culture that is similar but if you don’t let me explain what it looks like. 

My father side was all hard workers. My grandfather, William, was a product of the immigration from a country that fell into economic disarray.  The Thumms moved here in the late 19^th century from Germany.  My grandfather survived the depression by being a day laborer working in New York City as his father, also a William, lost everything after he fell ill from cancer in NYC.  Imagine Russel Crow in the movie Cinderella Man and the dock worker scene comes to mind. I believe he called it “pick up work”.  My grandmother, Theresa, was placed in an orphanage in the city after the family could not afford to keep her.  They family then pulled her out of the orphanage at the age of 12 to work in the sweat shops in the city as a seamstress.  My dad, also a William, was a truck driver for Shell Oil and drove for them for over 30 years and logged over two million miles.  He hated his work and told me often that “if you can find work you enjoy more than 50 percent of the time you are lucky”.  Having depression era grandparents certainly taught you a thing about Work.  The only thing that carried them through all of it was hard work.

New York Time Article from 1946 with my Mom, Czech Grandmother and Uncle fresh of the boat and arriving in NYC at 97 Pier at 57th Street.

My mother side of the family had a different path.  They were Czech and lived through the German occupation during World War II.  The family was wealthy and somehow navigated the occupation period as the Germans did not want to disrupt the commercial base at the time.  My grandfather was very entrepreneurial.  He was a millionaire in the 1930’s.  This of course all changed with the Russian invasion.  The Communist took everything the family had as they socialized the country and threatened to put my grandfather into the gulag.  The family fled in 1946 with forged documents to Sweden and then to New York City.  Arriving in New York with whatever they had packed, they started over.  While my grandfather never got back onto his feet again but, it was once again hard work that carried them through.

Regardless of these challenges, they always seemed happy about living their lives and never seemed to complain about working.  Things were in balance and work certainly was not viewed as a bad thing.  It was just something you did to survive and provide for a family.  I do remember them viewing the fact that I wanted to become a tradesman as a young man as something to not pursue on my mother side of family as they wanted us to pursue higher education. While my father side was more on the hard work blue collard type.  You graduate high school and then you go to work. 

My dad did support going to college but really didn’t understand it.  My dad thought that if you got a college education and become part of management versus being a worker you would have it made in life.  This guidance was very misleading and even proved dangerous as a mindset.  This gave the misconception that being smart or highly educated meant that you didn’t have to work hard.  What a mistake this was! It took me years to figure out that hard work was more important than intelligence but that when combined it was the true key to success. Read ‘Getting to ‘33’’ to understand more.

As a young kid, my sister and I learned early in life that work was what it took to get what you wanted.  Our parents made us get jobs at around 12 years old delivering newspapers.  One winter, Long Island had a blizzard, and we asked our parents to help us deliver papers.  The answer was “No”.  My sister and I pulled our sleds by ourselves in that blizzard delivering papers.  It snowed over 2 feet that morning and it took us four hours to deliver the papers.  I worked through high school and sometimes had two jobs.  It came easy as did school.  Going to Lehigh University I didn’t really apply myself there either and skated through. I hadn’t figure out hard work yet.  It wasn’t until I almost failed out of Lehigh and was threatened with loosing my ROTC scholarship that I finally figured out hard work was the path.  There was at least a spark.  This was further reinforced in my military training and then when I pursued a master’s degree at Columbia University.  I wasn’t the smartest person there, but I figure out that out working someone paid off.  Once this switch was thrown it certainly made life easier.  I just wish I had found it earlier.

Currently, I hear people say that they hate work and that they want “Work Life Balance’.  I must admit that I may have uttered these words myself as the saying came into vogue.  I have come to realize that concepts like ‘Work Life Balance’ are ironically opposing statements within itself.  When I ask young professionals to describe what it means, they say “that work stays at work and life stays at home”, “you need to separate your Life from your Work” or “you need to spend equal time doing both”.  Is any of this possible?  I really don’t recall my parents or grandparents ever saying they wanted ‘Work Life Balance’.  Early in my career I never contemplated a ‘Work Life Balance’.  I only understood Work and it was something you did to survive, eat and live.  ‘Work to Live’ made more sense. ‘Living to Work’ made you a workaholic and that was viewed as a bad thing.  I just don’t hear these terms used anymore.

I am not sure how many of you have ever reflected on this but is it possible to attain ‘Work Life Balance?  Do you want the doctor that has attained work life balance performing your brain surgery.  I find that work life balance is completely unattainable.  If you have passion in life and drive to be successful in your professional and personal endeavors, then I believe these two become intertwined.  So Let us try to find a word and phrase that better describes what we are trying to attain.

If you view work like a physics equation, it is a force you apply to an object over a distance that makes you money.  It is not rewarding or fun.  While I enjoyed work, I do think now most people do not.  Somehow Work became a four-letter word and therefore not a word that you want to define your life by.  Just like ‘Work Life Balance’ destroys the very aspect of pursuing a career that is positively intertwined with you as a person, Work alone is viewed as a drudgery and not rewarding. Maybe we can substitute the word ‘Work’ with something deeper and more intertwined with our lives.  I am going to propose Vocation.