What is the role of work in your life?
Exploring my annual struggle with focus, and redefining the role of work in my life.
Working it out
What I am currently struggling with is focus. I keep falling into this cycle every year. As I look back, I wrote a version of this challenge back in 2024and 2022 as well. In past the process of regaining focus was writing through it. It works momentarily but then fails again due to reasons stated by Paras Chopra in this tweet.
Whenever a yearning to answer the meaning of life arises, reinterpret it as your brain seeking the next interesting project it can engage with.
— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) October 4, 2025
This yearning is a function of our dopamine system wanting more than it has and seen so far in life.
Such yearning are a symptom of your curiosity but fail to materialise because of lack of focus.
This phenomena repeats annually when you start contemplating about progress. I want to find a fix that addresses this topic.
Fortunately, I stumbled upon an essay “Learning to work” by Virginia Valian via Mandy Brown who writes at the intersection work and meaning making on her blog Everything changes - Working it out - Learning to work
In this post the core framing is seeing work analogous to sex and that both are natural to people
The most important aspect of the analogy was the idea that work was natural. I had always thought of work as something I had to make myself do, something I didn't intrinsically enjoy. The analogy suggested that I was getting in my own way, that I was preventing myself from enjoying myself. It wasn't that I had to learn somehow to force myself to work, but rather to remove the roadblocks in the way of enjoyment.
I would briefly touch upon the themes mentioned in the post but the real meaning making will happen when you read the essay. The essay is broken down into 4 sections. Begins with rules of program for work, followed by fears of work, lessons from successful workers and finishes by addressing the role of work in one’s life.
There are 4 rules to the program of work, first is to focus on doing work for a fixed time slot. Increase the time slot only if you have more work to do and interested to do it. Do the work daily. Its an activity that you do each day like brushing your teeth. Lastly, focus on the reps and not the end product.
Moving onto the aspect of fear. This was relatable because of the dictator traits I have with work. Either I am angry that I am not competitive with others or dread being judged by the output, so deciding to hold it back. This results in a reliance on deadline that creates a vicious relationship with work, running from deadline to deadline.
The next segment covers 3 traits that represent successful workers. The attitude towards completing the work that was picked up, committing to it 100% and having self-respect.
I struggle with committing to many things without realising my level of sustained interest in them.
Last comes the role of work in your life. This is where I have shifted the most. Not working limits your growth in many ways but making it central to your life results in overwhelming anxiety which stem from factors outside of your control.
So, figuring out what the role of work in your life really helps with the motions that you feel as you go with your life. I have seen significant shift over here from when I began working out of college to now when I finish a decade working for a living.
Virginia closed the essay with the state I am currently aiming towards.
In short, I am not my ego ideal, but at the same time, my work problem is no longer a problem. I know now the role I want work to play in my life, and the sorts of internal changes I need to make. Although I still have problems working, the problems do not devastate me or make me despair; I handle them well and expect to handle them better.
I think this has bits of everything that I have read in the past with respect to dissociating with work identity. Though writing helps me address the core fear that is holding me back from enjoying work and provides the required time to think through it while I type it out. Reading this post just tied all of it together and made me reflect about all facets relating to work in my life.
If you have come this far, trust me the essay is even better.
Round up
I have been putting the advice from Growth Unhinged on LinkedIn to use. The goal is to grow distribution of ideas on the work front. Wrote 2 posts talking about my experience engaging in the domain of logistics.
The more time I spend solving problems, the more relevant my initial work becomes.
Next time, a marketplace or network product is pitching you, check if it increases the thickness of the marketplace or is just focused on bringing all the stakeholders onto one platform. Link to the full post
Continuing my reps in the sales process has led me to believe.
Doing my reps in sales of spot freight products, we often get prospects listing out their workflows to check the capability of our product against their workflows. I often pause and probe to understand if their workflows are currently capable of handling the dynamism, if not, pitch them why changing their workflows with the product is a faster way to handle dynamism in the market. Link to the full post
Links that resonated
There is only thing that I want you to read. Its the essay on which I riffed this entire post.
Sign off
I started this essay 3 weeks back right after the previous instalment was sent out. I didn’t fully grasp the essay until I sat down to make sense of it for myself. As a result of this meaning making, you have this issue after a gap of 2 weeks.
Last year was my lowest in terms of production over here. I have now written more than previous year with this post. The result is in any year spanning 52 weeks I have only posted 21 weeks on average. The challenge is not the idea but focus and when the frequency and quality of these post improve. You will know what I learnt about the act of work is being put to good use.
Signing off till next time,
Vivek, resting this week from work