It's personal, it's business

I had a bad day at work. We all have our own bad days at work, when bosses are extra demanding or clients too fickle, when deadlines are looming and deliverables seem impossible, when meetings are heavy and the pressure is palpable. We go through these bad days, freak out and rant to our officemates, then get over them like bad first dates. However, my bad day was to be the Bad Day of all bad days (thus the capitalization henceforth). I shall spare you the boring details, but the Bad Day was so bad that it didn’t go away. The Bad Day, which transpired a couple of weeks ago, is morphing into a Bad Month.

Worse, this Bad Day didn’t just bother me at work. It followed me around like a parasite, sucking the positive attitude out of me and leaving feelings of irritation, panic, disappointment, and even inadequacy. Whether I was still working or enjoying my free time, my Bad Day was hanging over me like a cartoon rain cloud. I’d be typing an e-mail regarding another project and suddenly my mind would start obsessing over the Bad Day. I would be drifting off to sleep at home and BAM! One little thought about my Bad Day would creep up on me and my eyes would be wide open again.

This was the first time that a Bad Day had followed me and made itself feel at home in my head. I’ve always tried to make it a rule to leave work at the office. I would rather work in the office until the wee hours of the morning just so I can finish everything there. I’d rather work in a coffee shop so I wouldn’t have to bring my Excel sheets and PowerPoint slides home. My own parents never brought work home, and I completely understand why. Home is my refuge from work. In this safe place, I don’t have to think about sales growth, meetings or deadlines; I can focus on myself and my family.

Also, I’ve always tried to draw the line between my personal sentiments and my feelings about work. For example, when I receive criticisms or comments on my work, I try never to take any of it as an attack on myself. Whenever I would go through bad days, I didn’t let them affect my after-work hours. Why should I? It’s work. It’s the work that I do, completely separate from who I am.

Now I had a Bad Day that left my heart completely destroyed, my poor heart that has never felt this way for anything work-related. Then again, maybe my heart should have been a little more prepared. This Bad Day is making me realize that work can be personal. How can work not be personal? Work is eight hours of your day (sometimes even 14). Work is your ideas and imagination, your efforts and your capabilities, your style and your strategies. While I still believe that work shouldn’t be taken personally, the link between you and your work should be fully understood and realized.

An excerpt from the book Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder goes, “How we work affects our consciousness, but our consciousness also affects the way we work. You could say it is an interactive relationship between hand and consciousness. Thus the way you think is closely connected to the job you do.” When you work on something, you somehow pour yourself into it. You will always be “in your work.”

In the same way, your work will leave its mark on you. Your jargon changes. Your primary font choice suddenly becomes the company standard. Your level of analysis deepens. Your people skills improve. That’s probably why people say you learn so many things from work that you don’t learn in school. Work can develop you into a whole new person. The things you learn at work aren’t relegated to the office, but can be applied to your personal life. I have a friend who manages her personal budgets the way we manage our company budgets.

Work shouldn’t be your life, I still believe that. I believe though that there’s nothing wrong with putting life into work. Not your whole life, obviously (I still don’t want to bring work home!). Fully committing yourself to your work gives you real accountability and makes you work harder and better. Bad days may feel crappier because you open them to your heart, but they will only spur you to do better. (Would you allow your heart to simply simmer in sadness?) The good days will feel deliciously successful, and you won’t just feel proud of your work, but proud of yourself as well.

That’s why work is not just livelihood, but also a career — a word defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life).” Let it be you who defines your progress through life, not simply projects or positions.