After getting a call from a new client I thought about my chaotic schedule. Not only do clients come and go. My hours are inconsistent. While the unpredictability of my work can sometimes be stressful, I looked forward to it with curious anticipation. Afterwards, I thought about what my schedule means to me.
Work is a common source of stress, regardless of what you spend your time doing. If you are overextended it’s important to see where it’s possible to cut back. On the other hand the source of stress is often internal. Your perception of life influences how you feel more than what actually happens. For this reason, different kinds of schedules can induce stress, as for example worrying about meeting the deadline in a nine-to-five job or freelance work that makes you constantly nervous not knowing when you’ll get the next gig.
There are pluses and minuses to each kind of work schedule. A nine-to-five job can seem tedious and boring on one hand or calming and focused on the other. Freelance work can feel unsettling and dizzying on one hand or exciting and refreshing on the other. You can feel good or bad about either kind of schedule.
That said, you can make up your mind to focus on the positive aspects of whatever kind of job you have. However, for a shift in attitude to be effective it has to seem true to you. it seems to me that I would be more open to seeing the positive aspects of my work if I was open to seeing the positive in the job I don’t have.
Everyone can benefit from having both structure and spontaneity in life. For example, someone whose work is open-ended can intentionally schedule certain activities for specific hours of the day to provide a much-needed sense of consistency and accomplishment, since anything done consistently over time brings mastery.
Those who need the security of a consistent schedule will function better by incorporating spontaneity into their lives. Going with the flow of unexpected interruptions provides a break that allows them to take a fresh look at the task at hand.
Thus, there are positive aspects to this job of yours that you would need to incorporate no matter what you were doing. Viewed in this way, I’m not just reluctantly agreeing to see the positive. I’m realizing that it’s intrinsically positive and even if I would be doing something totally different, I would still need both the kernel of a structured framework and the kernel of spontaneity and adventure. The awareness that this kernel is something I need a priori and not after-the-fact, for myself at least, takes stress out of the picture.