Joy In The Making

It’s common for people to arrive at the end of a working week with a wistful look over their shoulder wondering where it went.

The to-do list staring back at us with its unticked boxes and screaming:

Wasted

Failure

Defeated

and other such disparaging labels.

After all, the productivity complex is ingrained in the way we, and our workplaces, function. We feel our to-do lists are a measure of our achievement, success and worth.

I wonder, could there be something else behind the wistful feeling?

I was recently watching a show about someone who took 10 years to design and, mostly, self-build his family house. The show’s host kept bringing up the passage of time, with questions and statements along the lines of:

Why has it taken you so long?

Why do you need to do things in this level of detail?

Your family are going to be grown up before you’re finished.

Your family must be getting frustrated with you.

Towards the end of the show, the host announced with an a-ha and ta-da:

The meaning and joy was in the making.

It’s the classic ‘journey and destination’ story, and one we can lose track of when we spend our working weeks chasing deadlines and to-do tasks.

Yes, there will always be some boxes that need to be ticked in a day, week, month or year. And, yes, we’ll sometimes miss the deadline for completion.

And, yet, there are many more where there is scope to find more of the meaning and joy in the process.

When we look back over the week that was, it’s a great opportunity to contemplate where your meaning and joy is (or could be) coming from.

What might you change to find more meaning and joy in the making?

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