Power of the mind
The professor believes that the reason we may feel negative about our jobs, is because we haven’t chosen the career that’d suit us best. He reasons that if we really like our jobs we wouldn’t talk about work/life imbalances as we’d always be constantly hungry for our work and would aim to work as hard as we can each day. This suggests that if we’re unhappy with the amount of hours we spend working we just need to change roles. Chamorro-Premuzic says this would stop us dividing our lives into hours we spend at work and hours we spend at home – as we’d want to fuse them together out of love for our specially chosen careers.
Get motivated
Even when we find our vocation in life, we still may not want it to take up the majority of our waking hours. But the professor says this kind of thinking could have a negative impact on our workplace success. He points out that people who work hard have a higher status socially and the richer countries in the world have higher number of workaholics, many of who don’t complain about working too hard. In fact Chamorro-Premuzic controversially says that we should accept that working hard is necessary, because if we don’t then we risk being self-indulgent.
Using boredom
When we feel overworked, or think our family and friends work too hard, we may feel they or ourselves are too connected to technology. We could find ourselves logging on to our emails late at night, or checking messages when we meant to be enjoying a night out, or social networking while we sit with our families at home. The professor believes this doesn’t show technology is taking over our lives, but reflects our need to be more stimulated. Embracing this desire to seek information and contact shows how we have the energy to be switched on and harnessing this motivation in our work lives could make us more productive.