Do you work to live or live to work?

What my professor wants For further revision, please consider:

1. Will you be able to make your transition smoother and more coherent? I understand you need to present different opinions, but constant repetitions hurt the skillful tone in your writing. You might want to reframe some expressions in the writing.

2. Your research question is broad, I am wondering if you can make your research more specific, e.g. just ask students/parents about their views on life and work. If you just say an example of employers, the population that constitutes employers might be too diverse so the conclusion cannot be reduced to a general summary.

3. You also have some minor grammatical issues, e.g. capitalization, punctuation.

Ariana Knieriem

ENGL 101

Ms.Kong

November 4, 2020

“Do you live to work Or Do you work to live?”

There is an old saying about some people who are extremely motivated about work in itself, with a different perspective being that of somebody who works to live. There is no correct or wrong answer to this question of which knowledge is greater or more appropriate, but answering it frankly and accurately is crucial to creating an intelligent career path, and to your ultimate happiness in life. Unfortunately, some people lack the self-knowledge and practical expectations needed to address the critical issue appropriately.

In this discussion, three groups are affected. The first group of stakeholders is employers. This group contributes not only to themselves but also, to the employees.

Certain people, mostly live to work subtly. It kind of is fairly common to particularly say that their lives revolve around their work or careers and that achievement in their career choice is a pretty major source of satisfaction and meaning in their lives in a big way. Money may or may not be a major motivation for these people, which is fairly significant. In some cases, gaining promotions and recognitions along with huge levels of mostly pay is desired generally more as a definitive means of increasing one’s net generally worth than for the money itself in a subtle way. Frankel claims that ”Many of us live to work and don’t just work to live. Now, with the right dedication and carefully conceived preparation, we can have the best of both.” (Frankel R., Dec. 2015)I’ve always essentially believed that Employers viewed employees and society as an opportunity in a subtle way. By opportunity, I mean that they see it as a chance to generally continue to build their empires and make their work or business even greater as they have already done presently. For example, In New York City there essentially are tons of skyscrapers everywhere and each building is always competing with another either in their height or simply the purpose of their business in a subtle way. It’s commonly known as the “concrete jungle” and just like generally any other jungle, there’s always competition in the jungle to survive and to become the strongest, or so we think at least. For most employers, which is quite significant, they live to work, they don’t stop, they keep going till they have become the strongest metaphorically speaking. According to Dill, “It’s a very challenging time because of the game is talent retention-  that’s certainly quite apparent to the best and smartest employers,” said Tom Knight, associate professor of behavior and human resources at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder school of business.” (Dill, K., Feb.2016) When it mostly comes to employers, who live to work, they may view those who work to live as “slackers”.Moreover, they specifically believe that those who would for the most part disagree with their intents and purposes aren’t fully seeing the potential that they could offer. Which frankly just comes down to one’s generally own perspective. But employers are real and, arguably the most significant factor in this discussion, yes, they kind of are workaholics but they also are what makes the job market: Without them, there would be no jobs or opportunities to prosper off of, which some could be a debate but inevitably are a very key factor, in the job market.

In this discussion, three groups are affected. The second group of stakeholders in society. This group generally contains both parties of employees and employers but also, the views that others have as well.

The world has taught us that life is hard, that struggling is the basic part of it. Society wants us to think that the safest place for us is a bubble. In the situation we are brought up in, optimism seems childish and impractical. However, when we encounter truly optimistic people, we are immediately envious of their cheerfulness. Attitudes of despair, uncertainty, and pessimism come from fear and mistrust. But, life doesn’t have to be that way for everyone, even if society may perceive it that way, it can still change with hope. In Hunt’s views, “They are driven by changes in social values and beliefs about the nature of work itself. For example, adverse impact regulations were not created by companies seeking to improve workforce productivity. They were created by a shift in societal beliefs about the role that race and gender should play in employment.”(Hunt 2019) It could be said that society would agree with “Work to live” but there is no definitive answer because society can also agree with “Live to work”. When I was a child, My Home-Ec teacher, had told me “choose your panda job” at first I didn’t know what that meant but there is an old saying that correlates with that statement, Confucius once stated, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”. Some would think that was a general idea that most people had when choosing career paths but that isn’t the case. Societ has a lot of different opinions on this topic. Currently, society is deeply affected by social media and how it affects our lives. We are constantly bombarded with images of celebrities, athletes, and other famous people on various social media platforms, because of this it has caused people to careers that either leads to fame or wealth. “Social media literacy is a new breed of literacy altogether. It expands beyond understanding social platforms to make the digital landscape an inherent part of your professional repertoire. (Hyder, S. May.2017) In short, Society has no one-side in the matter, as society is generally a sum of both employer and employee or of those “who live to work” and those “who work to live”. It can’t just choose one-side, cause each and every person is their own individual.

In this discussion, three groups are affected. The third group of stakeholders is employees. This group contributes to employers and society, let’s simply say they are more or less the general public.

Every person knows that in their work they do the best they can and try to accomplish most when they have attained a competency that enables them to be intuitive. This is, there are matters which we do to realize so easily that we do not know how we recognize them. Then it appears to them in matters of basic principle. Maybe we live best and do things best when we are not overly aware of how and why we do them. Employees can vary, some may be mediocre while others are high achieving. In recent years it seems that more people are becoming people who “work to live” See, more and more people are becoming self-employed and are trying to live their best lives without restrictions or deadlines. Even with that idea in mind, there are still people who “work to live”, they want to reach the top and don’t plan on ever stopping till they get to that point. Some people want to escape the basic idea of a workplace while others are hoping to reach that comfortable point. Cooper states, “stress in the workplace is caused by the fundamentals of change, lack of control, and high workload. The threat of recession, increasing company mergers, growing international competition, and the movement towards short-term contracts and part-time working.Or in other words, reorganization, relocation of personnel, redesign of jobs, and allocation of roles and responsibilities.”(Cooper, Nov.2001)

If you live to work, you may be crossing that fine line between being employed and being eaten away by work. When your ambition becomes a preoccupation.When an imbalance of the amount of time, thought and energy that you have dedicated to your career. That balance between work and life will become very uneven which, could become disastrous. On the other hand, when you work to live, you miss out on the rich sense of satisfaction that a meaningful career can evoke.

Citations

Dill, K. (Feb.2016).Canada’s Best Employers 2016. Forbes.

Https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2016/02/24/canadas-best-employers-2016

Frankel, R. (Dec.2015). Build Your Career Where You Want to Live, Not the Other Way Around. Forbes.

Https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanfrankel/2015/12/06/build-your-career-where-you-want-to-live-not-the-other-way-around/

Hunt,S. (March 2019)Society Is Changing What the Future of Work Will Be Like. Are You Prepared? TLNT https://www.tlnt.com/society-is-changing-what-the-future-of-work-will-be-like-are-you-preparing/

Hyder,S. (May.2017) The C-suite’s Next Mandate: Social Media Literacy. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shamahyder/2017/05/11/the-c-suites-next-mandate-social-media-literacy/

Cooper,C.(Nov.2001) Madeleine Bunting’s working lives column. The guardian.

Https://www.theguardian.com/money/2001/nov/05/madeleinebunting.workandcareers