My Work View and Life View: my responses to the Designing Your Life exercises

I completed these exercises in Q3 2017 and are split out here from the full set of my book notes and exercise responses). The book title is “Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You”.

From Chapter 2: Building a Compass

Exercises

1. Write a short reflection about your Workview. This should take about 30 minutes, around 250 words - less than a page of typed writing:-

          Prompts:

1. Why work?

   1. Mandated by God. As He also mandated rest on the Sabbath
   2. To do something useful
   3. To get paid and provide for yourself and your family
   4. To pay taxes for the wider community and nation to support those who cannot work and provide for themselves
   5. To appreciate holidays and rest
   6. To use your gifts and talents
   7. To do good
   8. To have relationships beyond the immediate family
   1. What's work for?
      1. To stop me being lazy and just resting the whole time
      2. To provide useful output including looking after kids, poorly family members
      3. To get paid and to get "job" satisfaction
      4. Includes hobbies, pastimes, education, training
   2. What does work mean?
      1. "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result"
   3. How does it relate to the individual, others, society?
      1. each individual in a society depending on age and health/ability to work should work to provide for themselves without relying on the state to support them
      2. the same individuals should work to pay taxes to support others who cannot work
      3. Out of the money people earn, we should save for the future when we cannot work to support ourselves
      4. wide range of jobs need to be done by people for the wider good: teachers, nursery nurses, doctors, nurses, military, emergency services
      5. black economy came to mind: "the part of a country's economic activity which is unrecorded and untaxed by its government"
      6. I am a free marketeer so governments need to ensure that the market operates purely
   4. What defines good or worthwhile work?
      1. work that gives the worker meaning and a purpose, making use of their skills and abilities
      2. NOT drudge to the person doing it
      3. something that the worker finds enjoyable, a challenge and a sense of achievement
         1. is this is not the case, the person should change jobs
   5. What does money have to do with it?
      1. helps people live and pay for things, cf Maslow's hierarchy of needs
      2. redundancy focuses your mind on the importance of money to eat, the bottom level of Maslow
      3. taxes are levied in part to support those who cannot work and who demonstrably cannot work
   6. What do experience, growth and fulfilment have to do with it?
      1. if these are not happening, you should question if you are in the right job
      2. starting to question if living more for things outside work is a good thing and starting to think the unthinkable for me which is how can this happen for me at work and is it meant to
   7. SF: should I have also said something about what sort of work I want to do?
      1. how orgs work
      2. applied research, I want to do things
      3. project manager, analyst, consultant
      4. job that requires research, learning
      5. cross-sector - public, private, 3rd
      6. not just talking about stuff
      7. not sure should be doing L&D unless part of a wider role
      8. large/small orgs
      9. WOL/PKM
      10. producing courses?
      11. not necessarily line managing
      12. always had fear of freelancing re biz dev, risk
      13. probably not church-related unless a part of a wider brief
      14. like autonomy, is this a lack of accountability or I just like going rabbit trailling in a focused way when I get started
      15. a job with collaboration face to face and virtually
      16. learning about new orgs, sectors
      17. would rather earn less than take work home
      18. use social in a formal setting ie core to mission of org not for the sake of it
      19. not sure what I think about retirement
          1. started thinking about this issue with Dad's death last year after Mum's 2 years earlier and estate admin as a result
          2. does not feel like I am coming to the end of anything
          3. way too enthusiastic about things to not work
          4. still got lots of contributions to make
      20. I want to show up with all of who and what I am to bring to bear on the issue, challenge, work at hand

2. Write a short reflection about your Lifeview. This should take about 30 minutes, around 250 words - less than a page of typed writing:-

          Prompts:

1. Why are we here?
   1. God created us male and female in his image
   2. to worship God through Jesus and live in the power of the Holy Spirit
   3. work, rest to recreate
   4. I am not an accident, God decided to create me, He knows all about me and how many days I have to live
2. What is the meaning or purpose of life?
   1. to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as we love ourselves
3. What is the relationship between the individual and others?
   1. fundamentally intertwined
   2. we have to be aware and look to address the needs of others without being overwhelmed
4. Where do family, country and the rest of the world fit in?
   1. family is still the basic building block of society and much of society's ills is due to the breakdown of that unit
   2. the power of real communities, walled communities are an issue
5. What is good?
   1. anything that conforms to what God wants as revealed in His Word
   2. non-believers do good things too!!
6. What is evil?
   1. anything that does not confirm to what God wants as revealed in His Word
   2. everyone has a line that is unique to them, some we may agree on e.g. murder, paedophilia, domestic violence
7. Is there a higher power, God or something transcendent, and if so, what impact does this have on your life?
   1. YES - see above
   2. core to who I am as a person
   3. used to live as an orange, now as a peach, no segments
   4. lots of my free time spent on church-related events re leading/ attending
   5. keen that others should come to know Jesus for themselves, not a ram it down people's throats sort of person
   6. it is a personal decision not one for parents to make for their kids
8. What is the role of joy, sorrow, justice, injustice, love, peace and strife in your life?
   1. God made us as emotional beings, I love laughter, tears too, we are not robots
   2. For me tears flow in everyday life when I overflow with the Holy Spirit in response to what I see, experience, feel
   3. TV drama, real-life programmes can make me have tears, I refer to such times as "breathtaking TV" e.g. clips from The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Blue Bloods, The Newsroom
   4. tears increasing as I age (NOT all the time!! no need to worry about me!)
   5. in a church or work setting, there will be people who are experiencing the whole range of emotions from joy to sorrow, we need to be aware of that as we lead things
   6. do not be legalistic about one best way of doing things
   7. justice/injustice central to Christian life/teaching
      1. I need people to play by the rules
   8. I need people to do what they say they are going to do
      1. re-negotiate when they can't deliver
9. SF: other things
   1. I want to always integrate everything I do and not have compartments

3. Read over your Workview and Lifeview and answer the following:-

1. Where do your views on work and life complement one another?

   1. would love to know what others think about this if they read this
   2. they seem to, I do not think that they clash
   3. my current employer is not out to screw the customer for lots of cash, it is refreshing
   4. making me think that current employer is fine
   5. may be I need to crack on and do some job crafting
   6. feel like I am being excluded from some futures stuff that I believe I can contribute to
   7. defo needs a convo with boss who is also owner of the company

2. Where do they clash?

   1. mainly just that I am not being used to best effect
   2. culture at work could be better but nothing that cuts across my core values
   3. more communication would be great
   4. some co-workers never share info on prospects and biz dev work
      1. their view may be that this is for confidentiality reasons
      2. reminder to me that I am an account-type person, developing relationships
   5. defo feel I need to be able to contribute more and get in people's faces about it

3. Does one drive the other?

   1. historically they have run in parallel
   2. work defo came first before my Christian worldview was firmed up
   3. now they are intertwined

4. How?

   1. may be I need to see the Christian worldview as more solidly driving my workview but it defo feels like there are no issues

4. Summarise what you now know and incorporate your thinking from Week 2

1. not a major gap
2. do not feel fulfilled totally
3. would like to have the same level of joy and excitement in work as out of it
4. sort out what that might look like and where
5. clear the decks in current role and crack on with the newer more exciting stuff
6. challenge why I am not involved more in the current future work
7. feels like my assessment this week is not as bleak as my dashboard from last week
8. still do not want to be always doing work stuff
9. being influential was more prominent in last week's thinking for me
10. starting to think again of "expert" vs "visionary" vs "thought leader" and what that might mean for me (via Sonsoles chat during WOL circle)
11. how make use of my new found confidence from MOOCs, WOL circles, book club re starting things and being more fearless

5. (optional) The material in this chapter reminded me of "Core and Flex":-

1. watch the video: https://youtu.be/trPOurwfB4w
2. List out your "core"
   1. commitment
   2. loyalty
   3. truth telling
   4. do what I say I will do ditto from others
   5. keep promises
   6. integrity
   7. justice
   8. punctuality
   9. showing up
   10. passion
   11. enthusiasm
   12. completer/finisher
   13. learning new things that are needed now or build future capability
   14. my Christian faith
3. List out your "flex"
1. how people's faith is expressed
2. how people want to report progress back to me but I do need that progress!
3. how others do what they do to meet my requirement unless I mandate it for good reason
4. do not expect immediate responses from non-work comms, that is the whole point of Slack, email, tweets, FB posts