.....or perhaps that's only the way failures look at their working hours?
The amount of pleasure or I suppose, lack of pleasure, in carrying out any job, no matter how menial or trivial, entirely depends on the attitude of the person doing it. I seldom categorise work in to anything other than 'needs to be done' (in which case I do it) or 'doesn't need to be done' (in which case I don't do it). Some inexperienced people equate 'senior' positions in commercial organisations as having no days where they are involved in 'menial' or 'trivial' tasks/jobs and perhaps that is true for 'senior' positions within large organisations but within small organisations it seems to me that 'menial and trivial' tasks/jobs carried out by 'senior' positions tend to increase over the years rather than to decrease. I speak only personally about this as, clearly, I have little knowledge of what happens outside of Exetel.
I only mention this at all because I have had two 'meetings' with 'senior' people from other organisations this week that, because we have known each other for a fairly long time and once, a long time ago, worked with each other in two different organisations spent some of our time 'reminiscing' about the 'good old days'. They both continued along the 'large corporate path' and did very well for themselves as bright and hard working people almost always do. I 'diverged' from that path a long time ago. Our 'business' conversations were brief, no more that a few minutes in each case and successful in one case and unsuccessful in the other so we then chatted on for a fair while about the trivialities that people who once enjoyed close and enjoyable relationships often do.
As we chatted they both expressed surprise at the amount of triviality in my working life compared to theirs. Apart from the fact that their lives generally are focused on their physical fitness (2 hours of physical activity before breakfast supervised by their personal trainers of course and golf three times a week in the afternoons plus weekends largely devoted to outdoor activity made me realise just how much I used to like 'corporate life'. I also really did envy their 'personal staff' which in one case involve a principal PA who had a junior PA ("to get the coffee and things") and a third PA to look after email while the other had a PA who had a junior PA and he also had a 'rotating intern' to deal with ad hoc 'investigations'. Neither had a 'research assistant' but both had research departments to deal with permanent, semi permanent and project research whose managers reported directly to them.
Both said they lunched with important clients or important suppliers most days (though as they have both given up wine and all other alcohol and are on different food intake schemes they both said those demands on their time are a bore)...however it pays dividends as they both looked 10 - 15 years younger than I know them to be.Giving up alcohol and pretty strict diets had made the virtually daily business lunches and twice a week business evening functions containable though they both said an alcohol-less and no dessert meal even at the best of Sydney's restaurants was a non-event but their company doctor's insisted on such regimens for senior management and ran six monthly check ups to monitor progress.
Their working days didn't seem to consist of very much except keeping their head offices happy and their personnel away from Australia as much as possible. They both said meeting their business objectives didn't involve much of their time in most quarters though lately they have had a bit of a rough time. My days when I gave a brief description were very mundane and very dull in their eyes and probably would be in most other people' eyes if I ever bored them with the details. I hadn't realised just how far down the 'ladder' of what 'real' people do with their business daysl I had slipped until I had those two conversations.
So having thought about it for the past day or so I will do something that, in hindsight, I should have done a very long while ago and I will work out how I could usefully split my current workload so that I can do more useful things in my working day and shorten my working day by something like half and get rid of the week end work entirely. I think it is long past the time I can physically work an 80 hour week and I have to stop pretending I can.
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