The Nature of Work
both the eastern scholar alan watts and german philosopher friedrich nietzsche viewed the contemporary attitude to work as destructive. in their view work should be a matter of pleasure. in watts' case, it was in the form of an enlightened engagement with work, a kind of lightness and dance, whereas nietzsche saw the struggle involved in work as "the reward of all rewards" and as the goal in itself, not as a means for making profit.
according to nietzsche, the fear of boredom is what drives people to work. they would rather shun boredom through repetitive, monotonous tasks than be idle. in this case he distinguishes those who have the capacity to suffer boredom, who consider it a prequel to (what i can only assume he means) is a period of productivity:
"For the thinker and for all inventive spirits boredom is the unpleasant "calm" of the soul which precedes the happy voyage and the dancing breezes; he must endure it, he must await the effect it has on him: it is precisely this which lesser natures cannot at all achieve! It is common to scare away boredom by every means, just as it is common to work without pleasure."
the german philosopher schopenhauer (who influenced nietzsche heavily) wrote that when we are no longer struggling for the attainment of some good or the accomplishment of some goal, we fall into idleness and boredom. in his opinion the mere fact that we get bored, is proof that life is meaningless. if life had any intrinsic value, humans wouldnt get bored.
on the other hand alan watts claims that society has made the mistake of separating work and play, when in fact, one should view work itself as a form of play. stemming from his learning of eastern philosophies he suggests a transcendental approach to work, in which rather than seeing the tasks as part of a vast struggle, we should be in the "here and now" and only focus on the one task we are doing.
"because the art of washing dishes is that you only have to wash one at a time. if you're doing it day after day, you have in your minds eye an enormous stack of filthy dishes which you have washed up in years past, and an enormous dishes which you will wash up in years future. but if you bring in your mind to the state of reality, which is, as i've pointed out to you, only now. this is where we are. there is only now. you only have to wash one dish."
although it may provide some temporary solution to the difficulties of work this meditative approach to undertaking monotonous tasks seems a little bit impossible to maintain in the long run, and therefore a little naive. eventually boredom will settle in.
unless you are blessed with a large inheritance or have won the lottery it is most likely that at some point or other in your life you have worked. you therefore will have experienced the inevitable bane of doing things you wouldn't do if you had the day for yourself. work has always existed, whether in adam's casting out of the garden of eden cndemned to struggle to make ends meet, or the beginning of itinerant labour in the agricultural revolution.
what is of concern is not so much the ubiquitous nature of work, but rather the fact that we consider it to be a matter of duty, moreover a matter of suffering. the saying "idle hands are the devil's playthings" reflects this attitude. if we didn't have something to occupy our days with, we might be inviting bad situations into our lives.
moreover work seems to provide us with a sense of meaning. when meeting people, inevitably one of the questions we get asked is what kind of job we have - as a jump off point from which to centre the conversation around. the embarrassment of having to say we are unemployed is a stinging confession of apathy on their part.
being chained to a desk for the majority of the year often means there is little opportunity to engage in travel. but with rise of online jobs and video calls, employees can now hire or work from abroad, in the capacity of employee, or as self-employed entrepreneur. this new type of job is referred to a digital nomad. digital nomads are no longer limited to an office but can spend the unpleasant winter abroad in a tropical country all the while, earning income from their online business. but not everyone has the good fortune to be self-dependent, and the risks are high especially if one doesn't have a safety net, such as a pension or health insurance.
what is the best approach to work then? aside from the naive idea that we can turn the struggle of work into some form of play or enjoyment, the best option we have is to work for the sake of something that benefits us. nietzsche's appraisal of work seems to be the best therefore. we should enjoy the struggle, because we know that in the end we will be rewarded by something meaningful to our lives, whether it is the publishing of a book, the building of an instrument, or some other task that means we are connected to the product.