20 Jun Living To Work vs Working To Live

Posted at 07:06h in Featured, GI SAID IT by

Some people love to live their lives… waking up at 7am to get ready to go to work, make their commute or trip to their home office, and start their 8hr shift for a job they don’t really care much about. However, the goal isn’t the job itself, but rather what the job provides that allows them to do other things they love like spending time with family, going on vacations, and buying entertainment that gives them joy (or to be used as a distraction from what’s going on in the world). Then there are the few who live to do what they do. They are driven by such passion for their goal or mission, that they eat, sleep, and breathe that mission. It makes them feel alive, drives them… it becomes them (for better or worse). This will be about living to work vs working to live and more on the psychology of each of these types of people.

Living To Work

Personally, I’m 100% a live to work person. I never cared much about money and definitely never cared to work a job just for money. My brain doesn’t compute that equation. If it does not fulfill my soul and make me feel like life is worth living, is it really worth spending half of my life doing that? But this way of living is not for everyone; it requires a bit of an obsession on achieving a goal, improving something, or making an impact on the world at the sacrifice of a personal life. It’s not for ego, but it’s because it’s who you are; it’s in you.

I’ve been this way ever since I could remember. In my teens, my friends wanted to go to parties or chase after girls; I just wanted to achieve some goal of something that intrigued me. DJing had me mesmerized since the 8th grade and I spent most of my time when not at school on practicing, listening or watching other DJ’s, and reading the only book at that time I could find on how to be a DJ. I had this drive to get really good at it like my heroes on the radio, so I would practice… for hours and hours. I’d call my friends when I learned a new DJ scratch and make them listen to me over the phone performing it; I’m pretty sure they just left the phone on and went to go do something else. I was driven, I was consumed, I was enthralled, I was alive. This is what it is like when you’re made to live to work.

Working To Live

Now on the flip side, my sister is the complete opposite of me in this. She works to live. She has her Master’s in Clinical Psychology, works a 9-5 seeing patients, and some how fills out mountains of paperwork. But her job is not her life. It is a means to an end; a vehicle that provides transportation to the destination of family, home, and comfort. Does she particularly love her job? I’m not even sure, she’s never mentioned it. But if she had to list the top 5 important things to her, I’d doubt it would make the top 10. It provides money for the life she wishes to live, that’s it.

Purpose in Work

What we are talking about is two different types of people, neither better than the other. Rather, society needs both as they serve different purposes. It often goes back to leaders vs followers. One creates a job and the other fills a job, both needed for an organization to function. They do not work in isolation, they work in unison leveraging each other’s strengths to build something amazing. For those that wish to have work life balance, working to live makes sense as you can put the stressors or chaos of work behind you when you’re off to focus on what matters most to you. For those that have a fire inside of them to build or improve something, living to work may provide the satisfaction to put that drive to good use and help others along the way.

Which ever you are, make sure it makes you content with the life you live. Make sure when you put your head on your pillow, you felt it was a good day and looking forward to another. Otherwise, you may be living something that is not you, and that never ends with a smile on a face.

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