It's not me, it's you.

I had been simmering for quite some time, unmotivated, wrestling daily with what my next move should be, with how to get out of my spin cycle. I was feeling weirdly desperate to figure something out for myself. I wanted out but I didn't know where to go.

And then I found Daniel Pink.

I don't even know who he is outside of the books he's written and I don't care. I started reading this book and my whole perspective shifted.

Relief.

Because it's not me.

My workplace was driving me crazy. You might be thinking, "Of course, dummy. You were feeling unhappy AT WORK." But it's more interesting than that. Pink describes the old-school modes of management and work culture, based on the extrinsic motivators of carrots and sticks, and why they don't work well for anything other than the most routine jobs. Like licking stamps. Or punching holes. Workers who have any sort of responsibility for thought processes or creativity, for a combination of cultural and economic reasons, don't respond well to these systems. We need our intrinsic motivations fostered, we need to feel compelled to work well because we have three elements in place: autonomy, the potential for mastery, and purpose.

My workplace culture is a vast, deep, thorny system of sticks. And a few carrots. But not much else. No autonomy. Very little purpose. And so much focus on the status quo that the only thing open to mastering is the way things have always been done. I had begun to think that perhaps I wasn't cut out for working in groups. That perhaps I needed to work alone, my own boss, as I had for so many years in graduate school. That perhaps I was just lazy? No, no, and no. It's not me. I'm not lazy. I'm just sort of suffocating. Oddly, that realization brought such relief.

Because I started looking outside of my work for ways to get some air. I enrolled in a 10-week course about community organizing and leadership. I started going to the library and taking out more books about motivation and happiness and leadership and confidence. I am researching the hell out of this thing because THAT IS WHAT I DO. 

And now tonight I learn about this, which is next on my nightstand:

From this interview with the author: "I think this idea that work somehow makes you a good person is something that is very American to me. There’s this idea that it has something to do with your character as a person. I feel that it’s very ingrained and I don’t completely disavow it, too. Work is held up as something that is more revelatory about your character than  the interests you have or the way you care about other people or care for  other people."

Yes. So much yes. It's not me. It's all of us.