Do we work to live? Or do we live to work?

Is “working” supposed to be the source of sustenance for our life? Or is work the main purpose of our live? I think, for “work” in broader definition, the answer is both.

To analyze it, we can use Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Need” as our framework. From the most basic to the most complex:

  1. Physiological need: food, water, warmth, rest
  2. Safety need: security, safety
  3. Belonging and social need: relationships, friends
  4. Esteem need: prestige, feeling of accomplished, respected, valued
  5. Self-actualization: achieving one’s full potential, growth, creativity, authenticity, meaningful goals

So we do need work to support buy us food, shelter, safety, and to lesser extent, maintain our relationships. And sometimes, we can also gain esteem from work, for example if we reached a high position, or we received good review.

For self-actualization, it could be more difficult to achieve from work. Some jobs are really quite limiting. For example if the job is quite repetitive and not require complex tasks, we might not feel we are doing the best we could. Or, sometime, the job is intellectually stimulating, but there are so many blockers–“accidental complexity” (in contrast to “essential complexity”) that makes us feel the result could’ve been better; we feel disadvantaged by the situation. Or simply, there is not much opportunity. For example, we can have a manager with good financial health, good relation with family, received mostly good feedback from colleagues, but feel like the work is not very interesting. In this example, he/she has achieved needs 1-4 but not 5. One solution is that we can find self-actualization outside of work, e.g., doing a hobby, being part of community, etc..

It’s important to note the order. If we follow Maslow’s order:

  • it’s ok to not always achieve what we want (5) as long as it’s a better outcome for everyone (4);
  • it’s ok to not have high position (4) as long as you have a happy home (3);
  • it’s ok to be alone (3) and than do something dangerous (with bad people) (2);
  • it’s ok to take some risk (2) for your survival (1).

In some cases, directly focusing on self-actualization might not always work out well, for example (simplistic example), maybe some people when they are young, they want to become famous celebrity, or famous footballer. In this case, when we find it might not be feasible, we need to change plan to focus on fulfilling our more basic needs first.

Simiarly, when we already satisfy more basic needs, we can move on to look at the higher level, and see how we can accomplish those (instead of keep optimizing for those already met needs).

In reality, I think all of us still need to take care of all levels of need at the same time. Even the richest man still need to spend some effort to ensure his wealth can sustain him and the next generations. Even if we have happy family, we still need to spend effort to allocate time together to maintain the relationship.

So, if all needs are important, how do we make use of the hierarchy? I think it will be useful when we have to make a decision: when deciding between A and B, we can think about whether picking one can help us achieve a higher level need, and whether we have to sacrifice any lower level need or not.

~ Thanks for reading ~