More Pleasure - Don't Feel Guilty About Your Desire For a Happier Professional Life

We can leave it to the sociologists to pinpoint all of the causes, but it's clear that many of us feel a certain level of guilt when we wish our jobs were more enjoyable. We tell ourselves that "work is work" and remind ourselves that "no one ever said this was supposed to be fun or easy". We accept the inevitability of "the daily grind" because somewhere along the line we've learned to associate the idea of bringing more pleasure to our working lives as some kind of selfish hedonism.

It's time to give up on that perspective. Time is a finite resource and life is short. Over the course of forty years, someone who works forty-hour weeks with annual two-week vacations will spend over nine years of his or her life working. That's a long stretch of time and there's no reason to give up on its potential for enriching our lives and making us happier.

Work doesn't need to be an ongoing party. It's unreasonable to expect that every day at the office will be like a day at the circus. You can't expect forty solid hours of enjoyable entertainment every week and it's unrealistic to think that every moment on your job site will naturally put a big grin on your face.

However, it isn't unreasonable to look for ways to bring more pleasure to your career. In fact, it's just about the most reasonable thing you can do. When you love what you're doing, you'll do it better. When you're experiencing pleasure at work, you'll find yourself naturally reaching greater levels of success. Whey you're work life is happy, it will have a quality of life-boosting spillover effect on all areas of your existence.

Don't sell your life short. Don't give up on the idea that you can experience a professional life that pays the bills, challenges you and supplies a good time on a consistent basis. That's not impossible. It's certainly not something to give up on, either. Instead, you should make finding ways to bring more pleasure to the workplace a goal.

It's not greedy. It's not hedonistic. It's not selfish. It's smart. It's the best way to make those nine-plus years of your life something meaningful.