It’s a month for celebrating love which is great. Pass the heart-shaped chocolates. While you’re here can we talk about having a month when we celebrate wins at work?
I mean, ideally, we’d be celebrating every single day but a month is a nice starting point to get us into the habit. Then we could also do something about the glamourisation of grind culture and the weird tendency we have of celebrating when work takes over your life.
Do you really want to pull an all-nighter?
Does anyone want to work all night just to meet a deadline? I chatted with a couple of friends about this recently.
We agreed that it sounds really cool when ‘brag’ about it and the response is often one of awe and respect. However, when you’re actually doing it (unless you’ve slept all day, are in a creative frenzy or just can’t put the book down), you don’t feel quite so amazing. Your thoughts are likely to run along the lines of:
- How quickly can I get this done?
- I’m really tired.
- I need more tea
- All this tea is making me feel jumpy
- Why didn’t I start this earlier?
- I’ll be more organised in future.
This reminded me of a time early in my career when I was working late. On this particular night, I was in the office after the rest of my team had gone home. It may have been an effort to demonstrate my dedication. It may have been that I needed the extra time to do the tasks I’d neglected during the day). It was probably a bit of both. It wasn’t the first time.
Anyway, my boss Kathryn walked through the office, spotted me typing away and told me to go home. She explained her reason for being there late; she had a big presentation to the marketing board the next day and wanted to practise it. Then she told me that I would impress her most if I got all my work done during the day and had a life outside the office. These words from 2002 stuck with me.
I can’t say that I’ve followed this approach to the letter but it does make the idea of an ‘all-dayer’ seem really cool. Now, I totally understand that people work well at different times. I often feel most creative late at night but I’m over celebrating all-nighters and making work my whole identity.
Can we focus on the good stuff?
What I’m saying is celebrate your work but don’t save it for the big things. A pat on the back when we finish on time every single day. Happy amazement at how much we can add to our ‘done’’ list. Aspire for proper lunch breaks to have the same kind of kudos as an all-nighter. Make it normal and cool to be well-rested rather than tired and stressed.
Doing your job well is cause for celebration. Delight in being in employment that puts your skills to the test and brings the best out of you. Or that something going wrong gave you such an opportunity to make things work better in the future and learn from this.
When we save the praise only for new contracts and big wins then we’re doing ourselves a disservice. We’re overlooking how much we achieve every single day and how amazing we are. I get it; it can be tough working against the culture in a big business. However, I’ve written before about the ‘invisible rules’ that small businesses and freelancers can also struggle with. Show yourself some love and learn to celebrate what you do.
If you need some ideas on changing your work culture around celebrations try these:
- Pick a day of the month or week to look back at what you’ve achieved.
- Make a written month review a habit (Stop, Start, Continue also works for this) and make a point of looking back over previous months.
- Put a star sticker on your calendar for every day you finish at your planned time.
- Find an accountability buddy to share small successes with – the brilliant Jason Berkowitz is running a club on this.
- Start a gratitude practice.
- Focus on the changes that will have the most impact on your wellbeing, success and enjoyment of your work
Little wins, become big habits, you would want these for your friends and family, but you need to start with you.