The Gospel According to Schmidt
"An unsatisfying work life is much more than a 40-hour-per-week problem, because of its profound effect on your morale while you are off the job. You may be pained to think of it as such, but your job is probably the biggest project of your life. It is probably the only activity to which you will ever devote the most alert of your waking hours with such disciplined regularity, day after day after day. During no other period of comparable length in your life will you make an effort of this magnitude on any project of your own. Thus, for all practical purposes, your life's work is at stake, and so it is understandable that your most serious struggles are to control it, not to sell it to the higher price.
"A work life controlled by others has severe and inevitable consequences, and accounts for much of the stress that individuals suffer. Powerlessness at work can mean many things, all of which are stressful: difficulty getting assigned to work that is interesting and creative, lack of control over (or even sight of) the end result of your work, lack of control over how to do your work and when to do it, close supervision, lack of control over the work environment, lack of privacy, vulnerability to sexual harassment, lack of respect, and job insecurity. This attractive package comes with the worry (although you try not to think about it) that your blood, sweat and tears are going into work of questionable social value, work whose bottom line is enriching some corporation, serving the military or bolstering some elite. People stuck with such unfulfilling work often find themselves engaging compulsively in any of a variety of escapes. The escapes themselves are a reliable sign of someone who lacks intrinsically satisfying work: anxiety eating, alcohol and drug use, compulsive buying, vegetating in front of the TV, total scheduling and extreme busyness--anything to avoid the pain of reflecting on your situation."
(Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, 98-99)
"Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will"