Are we work-obsessed?

“Great minds talk about ideas. Small minds talk about people.”

I don’t know who said it or where the above quote originated from, but it has certainly been doing the rounds on Twitter feeds everywhere.

And I must say, I beg to differ. When did we become a society so obsessed with big ideas, big deals and big clients that we regard these topics of conversation as more interesting than our fellow human beings?

Every piece of communication I see is crammed full of business-speak, with people either advertising their work or commending another on his or her achievements. In fact, these conversations dominate dinners out with friends and social gatherings with complete strangers alike. If you haven’t achieved something worth an aggressively-written tweet or status update in the last month, you’re probably not going to be very interesting to the next person.

Of course, a career-driven society has become quite necessary, spurring on the conversations I just mentioned – we need to be multi-skilled, ambitious, outspoken and bursting with ideas to make it anywhere. This is fantastic for the more outgoing personalities out there, but a nightmare for those (yes, like me), who value days and long periods of time spent “switched-off”.

Switched-off doesn’t mean lazy; it means placing importance upon reflecting on life, spending time with friends and family and engaging in quiet activities or hobbies that stimulate the mind in ways that work never could.

A few minutes online and I honestly sometimes feel as though I can’t keep up. I seriously question whether I am a complete nobody, or a total layabout, for not constantly seeking out ways to do more. So many people are doing an absurd amount of things, or working several jobs, and are constantly busy. I absolutely admire these people for their energy, drive, tenacity and ability to blur the line between business and pleasure, but that’s not me.

The unfortunate consequence of this busy individual is that this person is perceived as more successful, attractive and appealing than those of us who shy away from the limelight and the constant activity - or ‘hustle’ - as they like to call it. Many of us most certainly have goals and are achieving them, but place equal emphasis on the less glamorous aspects of our lives – for us, admitting that we’re spending a typical Sunday doing absolutely nothing besides buying an ice-cream and going for a short drive is not an admission of time wasted.

Going back to the quote that set me off on this mild outburst, wouldn’t it be great to see and hear more conversations about PEOPLE? Where has the emotion in our lives gone? It all seems to be an endless and highly calculated process of ticking off the right boxes, and then sharing those ticked boxes with the world, and then being patted on the back for it… repeatedly.

Let’s work hard, and fulfil our dreams, but not get so engrossed in it all that we lose sight of the people in our lives and the parts of them we appreciate outside of their careers or skillset. When we think of our very best friends, or those that have made a real impression upon us, it’s more often than not those little nuances about them that we remember first – their ability to crack jokes at the drop of a hat, their OCD tendencies or their knack for bringing a sense of calm to a tense situation.

Let’s go back to “how are you doing?” being just that, and not a veiled version of “how’s work?”

It’s the people in our lives, and not the work they do, that make us go out and spend unnecessary amounts of money on half-price sushi and cocktails. There are simply far more people in the world than there are jobs, and I feel as though we have lost sight of that, in our endless pursuit of ultimate success.

Without the people we share our lives with, the successes we achieve in wealth are empty. Let’s go back to paying equal attention to both.

Energy

One day, when I’m three-quarters blind (I’m currently half-blind) and 65 years old, I will look back on my days of working on Hectic Nine-9 fondly. It’s a shame that only once we’re removed from a specific period or scenario in our lives, do we realize how fantastic some of those periods and scenarios actually were.

In-between looking for a place to live (outside of my parents’ abode), worrying about the price of petrol and getting so old in years that the mention of the word ‘club’ incites a feeling of penetrating nausea, comes a special moment or two that I am determined to bookmark in my memory bank.

Yesterday, I went on my second (of many more) shoots at Sahara Park, Newlands, to cover the Cape Cobras vs. Dolphins T20 cricket match. There is very little in that sentence that – under normal circumstances – wouldn’t usually put me to sleep, but as part of my new role as Online Content Producer for HN9, I am required to part with the free time I usually enjoy on weekends, forfeit those fabled naps and capture the best moments that events such as this cricket match has to offer.

The best (and worst) part of doing what I now do is that I am completely out of my element. As much as a desk-bound job saps at the staying power of my spinal cord, it also affords me the benefit of retreating into my own head, a place where I feel most comfortable. Walking around a noisy stadium, snapping pictures of crowds and not being able to listen to some Jimmy Nevis over a cup of black Rooibos tea is far from the norm for me. Far from the norm, until I shot this rather spontaneous video of JP and Lukho, two (awesome, talented, friendly) members of the hip hop group Purple Hearts…

We were outdoors, time was limited, a Hectic Nine-9 fan had to keep boisterous members of the Cape-coloured community out of shot and I had to maintain a steady hand with my newly-acquired iPhone. Sounds simple, perhaps. But when you’ve spent the last five years writing scripts in a corner of the office, such a scenario was as foreign and intimidating as polished, technologically-advanced Eva was to rusty, creaky little Wall-E.

But two minutes later, the seemingly simple video was done. It looked good. It had energy. And more importantly, I had energy.  I had belief that change – as daunting a prospect as it may be – is simply essential to your wellbeing. With the natural passing of time a phenomenon that we can reliably count upon, surely life itself should be transforming at a similar rate?

If it isn’t, it’s up to you to find that something – no matter how small, and even in the form of a 37” video clip – that will reignite that childhood energy you could once conjure up in an instant.

Find it.