What did you do at the weekend?

Photo: Chryssa Lai, MediaCom Sydney

At a recent discussion about the future of media being cross boundary, one of the speakers raised the idea that for a business to succeed the boundary that they needed to cross was the boundary that is drawn by most people between work and life outside work.

She talked about the immense enthusiasm and energy that she, and people she knew, put into their personal projects outside work – creative projects, DIY, coaching kids teams, gardening etc.  Her theory is that company’s need to gain that level of enthusiasm for the work that people do for which they earn their salaries.

This is undoubtedly true on two levels.  First business is tough and if your workforce doesn’t genuinely buy into your culture and put real enthusiasm into their day to day tasks then you will probably be beaten by a competitor’s workforce who do manage it.  Secondly you spend too much time at work to be doing a job that you cannot be passionate about.  So if you can’t engage your passion during your day job, you’re probably in the wrong day job.

What I was less sure about was the level of energy that the speaker and her friends seemed to be expending on an ordinary weekend.  My weekend plans were more about chilling and hanging out than creating or coaching.  Momentarily feeling inadequate I then quickly decided that she was probably painting an exaggerated picture to make a point.  According to a survey by Travelodge (reported in the Sunday Times) this is not at all unusual as many of us are rather creative in our reports about our weekend activities.  Their poll of 5,000 adults suggested that 27% lie about what they’ve been up to.  20% felt others were having more fun than them and 41% yearned for more excitement.  “Weekendvy” leads us to pretend we are painting the town red when in fact we’re catching up on sleep.

Perhaps because we’ve been so energetic in the office?

Comments are closed.