It was one of those late Friday work calls where once all work related discussions was done, we started with the casual “Looking forward to the weekend” conversations.
One colleague, who has a 10-year-old child, said she was actually looking forward to the weekend being over. They’d been planning a theme park trip for months and her son was excited — but it happened to fall right in the middle of a brutal heatwave in the UK. Forecast: 33 degrees. That’s like 45 in India. “Things you do for kids,” she sighed.
Another colleague agreed and remarked, “Yeah raising kids is Hard work!!”.
I figured they didn’t mean it as literal “work” work — just an expression. But my curious mind didn’t stop there.
I rang up my Mom and asked her, “Did you consider raising me as work?”.
Without a moment of hesitation she said, “Yes!!”
Now I really wanted to understand what we mean by “work”. Maybe we’re defining it wrong. I asked her, “How would you define work?”
“Work is work,” she said. “A task. Any activity you do to get a desired outcome.”
So does spontaneously playing with a child count as work? Not really — there’s no goal in mind. So why do parents often describe raising a kid as hard work?
I wanted to think deeper on how this affects our views towards traditional work.
An Artist doesn’t start with: “I want to paint the greatest piece ever” or “I want this to sell for a million.” He paints to express. That’s it.
The picture is a way of expressing his mind, giving shape to his thoughts and craft.
He does not feel onerous painting the picture as all he is doing is expressing himself. A collector comes across the picture and impressed by it, he praises the marvelous “Workmanship”. He is ready to pay a high fee to buy this piece of Art.
The creation of the Art might seem like “Work” for the collector. But it is purely an act of expression for the Artist.
The same activity can be considered as Work by one person and leisure by another.
In the real world though, an Artist needs to also make ends meet. He needs to find a way of selling the art, an activity which might be too onerous for him that he would consider it Hard work.
Selling can be an Art for some and Hard work for others. Crunching the numbers might feel like a detective trying to solve a crime for some and hard work for others.
“Work” isn’t just about the effort we put in — it’s about whether that effort aligns with what gives us energy or drains it.
And this is where the problem starts.
We are unaware of what gives us energy and what drains it. If an artist finds himself doing more of sales and less of expressing himself through art, his perception of being an artist is clouded by the hard work he does in trying to sell the art. And this is when being an artist feels like work.
The question here is “Why does he spend most of his time in Selling?” It is because he expects a desired outcome through his art. It could be becoming a Millionaire or becoming famous rather than focusing on what exactly makes him an artist - expressing himself.
I often hear people saying, “I’m looking for a high paying job in a high paying industry”. Guess what, that is hard work. You can throw your million dollar paycheck in my face as a response.
But if most of your waking hours are spent doing something you’d never choose to do without a paycheck — well, that’s the very definition of work, isn’t it?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting money or status or recognition. Those are valid motivations. But the trap is when those become the only reasons — when the process stops mattering, and only the outcome justifies the pain. That’s when work starts feeling hard. Not because it’s demanding, but because it’s disconnected.
But what if we flipped the lens?
What if we measured work not by effort or outcome — but by how close it brings us to who we are?
Then maybe raising a child is hard work — but it’s the kind that builds you up.
Maybe painting is not work — until you turn it into a means to an end.
Maybe chasing a job for the money isn’t the problem — but forgetting why you want the money is.
Hard work isn’t bad. But blind work is.
The kind that makes us forget what we actually wanted when we began.
So yeah — call it hard work. Just make sure it’s for something you chose, not something you ended up doing because everyone else said it’s worth it.
