Work-Weary? -- Pick Your Sign!

Not every working person is work-weary, but I am one of the confessing, certified work-weary. I am an entrepreneur with my own growing business. I suspect my work-weariness is self-inflicted by workaholic patterns.

Work Styles

Maybe we need a Work School modeled on a Ski School to sort us into classes to improve our work styles. Ski instructors watch you ski and tell you to stand under a sign for the correct class… BEGINNER, INTERMEDIATE, EXPERT. Work instructors could watch us work and tell us the correct class to join.

In the Work School, the "expert" level sign reads NO PROBLEM. They are the work-rested people. There stands my friend Bill who can run his family business on a one-week trip each month to Texas from his home-above-9,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. Another sign reads WEARY, NO OPTIONS. Under that sign stand 45 percent of the families in Barranquilla, Columbia who are work-weary from searching for some way to supplement their average family income of $2 a day for a family of six. I can pray for them, but I don't really understand this kind of weariness. The instructors tell me to stand under the intermediate sign reading WEARY WITH OPTIONS. I want to report on the WEARY WITH OPTIONS class as I attempt to improve my skills for balance and relationship.

ENROLLMENT Last fall I described life in my high tech company to the Christian businessmen in my monthly small group. As the group adjourned, a friend sensed growing confusion and chaos in my life and handed me a piece of paper with this question: "If we meet in this room three years from now, what must happen in between for you to be happy?" He encourages me to come up with an answer and report at length to the group the next month. He had enrolled me in the WEARY WITH OPTIONS class.

WORK AUDIT My first step was an audit of my current work projects. I actually have four jobs, any one of which would be a full time job if done correctly: I am Managing Director for the company (Job 1), Product Manager for our government business (Job 2) and Product Manger for our commercial business (Job 3). Job 4 consists of writing, leading retreats and teaching a seminary class for pastors on the ministry of the laity. Before the audit, I would have said they were all related to my call from Christ. Now I sense a need for beginning a different kind of project--one that will effect recovery from the work-weary situation in my life.

TRANSITIONS William Bridges' analysis of life changes in his book Transitions offers an insight that endings and new beginnings are not butted up against each other. They are actually separated by a fairly long period of time called the Neutral Zone. This could be three years of adding, dropping and sorting projects. I began to appreciate the advice of a very busy person, the apostle Paul, "I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ." (II Cor 10:5 Moffatt). My journey across the Neutral Zone is, ultimately, a spiritual journey.

THE JOURNEY I am flooded with unanswered questions. Which projects do I need to end? How do I prepare? What will leave me with a sense of loss, which a sense of freedom? How far is it across the Neutral Zone? How long will it take? What financial resources are required for the trip? How do I tell when I get there? Which projects do I want to bring with me from my personal and family life, from my daily work and from my spiritual and community life? What new projects and processes do I want to put in place?

In all of this weary confusion, I wonder if God is really calling me to cross the Neutral Zone into a new sense of purpose, clarity and energy. Fear of the unknown causes me to argue with God to let me stay where I am. Weary is normal to me-- the only way I know how to do things. But if God has a good plan for me, why argue? If God's plan is bad, why bother in the first place? So I seek to know and do God's will, even in my daily work. I will gamble that these endings and new beginnings will lead me to increased love, peace and serenity and free me from the fear, pain, shame, anxiety and anger that put me under the WORK WEARY sign in the first place.

Bob Slocum is both an "ordinary Christian" as a Presbyterian layman and a high-tech entrepreneur as founder of Polatomic, Inc. a Dallas TX company that specializes in new product development.

His book Maximize Your Ministry has been reprinted and is available from FAW.