Hard work: we either love it or we don’t. And if we don’t, we think we should. But actually, it’s not all that healthy and often not even that effective. Journalist Peggy van der Lee put the brakes on and learned to deploy her talents in a more relaxed way. In issue 12, you can read all about slowing down at work, and Ellen de Lange-Ros gives three tips on how to do just that. Below is a preview of the article to pique your curiosity.
“I love working. I loved it back when, during my student days, I was working fourteen-hour shifts in a café, serving hot chocolate to people coming in from the cold while getting 80 tables ready for the evening crowd at the same time. Keeping people’s drinks topped up on a crowded café terrace, making people happy, running as fast as I could. I only took a break when it was quiet—like, for ten minutes at 4 p.m. Now, twenty years down the road, not much has changed. I don’t work fourteen-hour shifts anymore, but I do often work for fourteen hours at a time. Doing interviews, conducting background research, writing, working on product development; it’s not my feet or my hands that get blisters nowadays, but my brain. And just like I never complained about my sore feet, I don’t complain about my bursting head. All those meetings, deadlines and to-do lists are just part of the job. I often have to work in the highest gear and end up doing everything at once, then feel wrung out in the evenings— that’s just the way it is. Work hard, play hard: that’s the way to do it, I thought. Until, that is, I met Ellen de Lange-Ros, owner of online marketing agency Faxion, who changed my perspective.”
- You can order your copy of issue 12 here.
