Are you trying to think out-of-the-box sitting inside one?
“Some birds aren’t meant to be caged, their feathers are too bright.” — Stephen King
As the saying goes, humans were not born to just pay bills and die. We were not designed for monotony. Incessant honking wasn’t supposed to be our alarm clock. And yet, waking up each day is exactly the same. What happened to the hunter, the explorer, the human? Why do the ones created to create just follow rules and procrastinate? Don’t you think it’s time to be born anew, to rejuvenate, to reboot?
Our workplace, which is supposed to give us a platform to conjure unique ideas and create amazing things, has instead become the coffin for our creativity. Sitting inside a box all day is not just physically limiting but halts our creative growth as well. Already under the pressure of being different, people hit a roadblock when there’s no inspiration to seek around them. They’re trapped inside cubicles which are all so alike. Inanimate tables and chairs don’t do any favours and neither do the motivational posters on the work desk. Even if on the fringes, we all have started competing in the rat race. The thing we never wanted to be a part of, has become a part of us.
“It’s a Monday, it’s so mundane, what exciting things will happen today?” — Courtney Barrett
Is it really 9–5?
“There’s an in-time at office for sure, but we are not the ones deciding the out time”, says Carla, a software designer working in a “fast growing” SaaS firm. A 9–5 workday, if looked closely, always overlooks the overtime put in waiting for client feedback, the last minute revisions and the brief that arrives at the eleventh hour. That leaves you with just enough time to drive back home and drop dead-tired on the bed with shoes on. Sounds like your own story?
If it was really 9–5, imagine all the things you could do before you retire for bed. That hobby class you always thought was possible after work, catching-up with friends who keep accusing you for being such a spoilsport, that foreign language lesson you’ve been putting off or that recipe you always wanted to bring out of the book on to the dinner table.
While all of this sounds possible only after retirement, the solution probably lies in getting out of the box called ‘the office’. Break-free of the guidelines that say your growth is in committing yourself to your workplace. Plan better. Remove dependencies. Figure out ways to contribute to your organization effectively, yet smartly, if possible, remotely.
Traffic eating up your evenings?
If you calculate the number of unproductive hours in a day, you’ll be surprised. The beautiful, fresh mornings that could trigger the best of ideas are spent steering through the traffic and well, double-tapping on Instagram. And did we mention the cost of commute? It’s sometimes more than the yearly increment you manage to get on your pay. The only roads worth driving on are the highways? Agree?
How many days till the weekend?
The only excitement that keeps us going through our routine is waiting for the weekend. Partying on Saturday night is like a ritual prescribed in the scriptures. What’s laughable is the way we vacation! There’s routine there too! That 5N-6D tour of a country, or that week-long Europe-trip is an example of our routine following us in our vacations. We vacation to break the monotony, to live a completely different life, to experience something refreshingly surprising. But that wake-up alarm, that taxi waiting downstairs to take you to “sightseeing”, those ritualistic selfies in front of the bridges, museums and galleries and that haste in covering as many tourist spots as possible — coax us into believing that we are having fun. Such vacations earn you selfies, not memories; they might tire you, but rarely leave you with an unforgettable experience of being born again. With such strict routine binding every single day of our lives, it’s surprising how we expect ourselves to be creative.
True inspiration is out there, away from home, probably, in a different country, but surely in a different world.
However, in the last few decades, more and more brave and passionate individuals have decided to step out of the normality. They have understood that the real world lies outside our comfort zones and the routine we’ve built for ourselves.
They don’t believe in living a stifling, prisoned life and waiting for the weekend to breathe. Instead, they live every moment the way they want and let their work accompany them as a ‘good fun’ companion. Work, for them, is not a burden; it’s not an obligation but a way of expression. Travel, on the other hand, is a way of life that shouldn’t require applications and approvals. They soak themselves in the culture of a city and blend themselves into the local community. They explore the city from corners to cornerstones. The linguistic and terrestrial barriers they face in the early days, refine their skillset at the end of each geographical update.
Inspiration does not come by breathing stale air in window-less offices. It comes by traveling to new terrains, adjusting to polar opposite climates and meeting people from foreign cultures. To do something really path-breaking, you need to consistently change your path.
Think this is impossible? It’s not. There’s a way.
Let’s make the world our workstation
Remote working opens immense possibilities for those who hate to be confined in boxes and boundaries. Imagine a new city with every new project you begin. New workspace, new landscapes, new perspective.
Imagine taking your next client call while driving on the Great Ocean Road in Melbourne, giving finishing touches to your artwork inside the sun-dipped structures of Bali or preparing your next pitch deck against the stunning Tokyo cityscapes. Inspiration will override the codes of banality etched inside you and replace it with pure exhilaration. It will find the human inside you and reboot it every time you have a tryst with monotony.
Can a 9 to 5 ever do that?
It’s time we rethink work, workday and worklife. Get out of our comfort zones, take risks, make mistakes and reboot our lives for good.
