Feeling A Little Dread about Going Back to Work?

When you get up and go to work, consider a few questions.

Another Labor Day long gone, which is for many of us the end of vacation, the time we go back to work.  And though we may have things we wish were different in our work lives, it’s easy to settle back into the same old routine.

We often think we have plenty of time to make changes, plenty of time to figure out how to improve our life at work or to balance our work and home life—"If I can only get through this current difficulty, this current issue, I’ll have time to think about that; there’s always tomorrow.”

But five or ten years can pass in no time. It’s a common illusion that there will always be time for the things we need to do, when in reality we only have the present moment. If we are always imagining that there will be time later, one day we’ll look around and realize there is no more later. Most of our now’s will have passed.

So, how can you make your time at work a little bit better? When you get up and go to work, consider a few questions:

• Who are the people I most enjoy and value at work, and what is it about them that is valuable? Am I appreciating them?

• Who is different from me in some way (who thinks differently, comes from a different background, has different expertise), and what can I learn from that person?

• If I’m having a conflict with another worker, what can I do to alleviate it?

• What kinds of connections am I missing at work that I might want more of? Could I imagine a way to make these connections more likely, or richer?

• Do I really know my workmates? Is there someone I’d like to know better? How can I reach out to them? 

You might even pick that person with whom you seem to have the least in common, and make a point to be curious and ask about something that they’ve displayed, like pictures of family or pets or a T-shirt they wear at work.

Then, when you head home, consider how you feel and how the experiences of the workday might influence your time at home. It could be that this influence is, on balance, a good one. But if not, are there small, reasonable changes you can make? Would ten minutes or half an hour of alone time help, or a short walk or swim before you get home from work? Would it help to turn your smartphone off for a specific period of time to keep work from spilling into family time?

Sometimes we’d rather be doing anything other than working. But these hours are actually a major social opportunity. Many of the happiest people in the Harvard Study of Adult Development were able to balance (often after much difficulty and negotiation) their work lives with their home lives. They understood it was all of a piece.

Our life doesn’t wait at the door when we walk into work. It doesn’t stand on the side of the road when we climb into the seat of our truck. It doesn’t peer through the classroom window as we meet with our students on the first day of class. Every workday is an important personal experience, and to the extent we can enrich each one with relationships, we benefit. Work, too, is life.

Excerpted from Waldinger and Schulz, The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, 2023.

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