You should be dancing (yeah)

The e-mail pings. The phone buzzes, and skirls across the desk. It’s a new project.

How do you react? Freeze, flight or flight?

Or… do you step away from your desk and do a little dance?

As an employee in a number of large organisations, I wasn’t dancing. Some places, and times, were dancier than others, but in general, new work wasn’t something to get too excited about. Most often it just added to a to-do-list that already daunted me.

I didn’t feel that a new piece of work was a pat on the back. It give me that recognition or feedback that I was credible, expert or reliable. And however diligent I was, did I genuinely connect that piece of work and my next wage slip?

No. Too often new work was an inconvenience. That virtuous circle of work/purpose/reward was broken.

I run my own business now – and work can be a chore at times. Not all of it is glamourous, some can be a little rote at times. And a new piece might land when I’d planned another project, or was going to work on new business, or I was going to finish early of a Friday and slope off to the Beer Shed.

But every new piece of work is a celebration, and there is a genuine, actual, physical dance for each one. (And a bonus twitter gif too.)

Now, some of those dances are not much more than a shimmy-and-slide; maybe it’s just a days’ work, it’s not too challenging, the results won’t shake anyone’s world. But some of them are a full-on freestyle freak-out – it’s great work, I want to get stuck in, I can immerse myself in it and produce some crucial, insight-driven recommendations.

The purpose is back, I can see the link to reward, and the work is better for it.

I never realised how important it was that work might make me dance. Now, I can’t imagine work without it.