During my many life and work experiments, I entered the co-working phase at some point. From the outset, it wasn’t so easy to find a place that didn’t exist for the purpose of praising each other and each other’s life concept. I was immediately put off by another coworking space because it was simply a pseudo-modern edition of the good old open-plan office.
Here’s a tip:
If you book yourself in there as an ex-corporate employee, then your brain has very little chance of finding a new mindset.
Testing CoWorkSpaces showed this in particular:
The whole world seems to want to live the “startup” spirit—and now, at the latest!
The “startup spirit” can also be used as an excuse for all kinds of non-professionalism. That makes it very convenient for the ‘organizers’ – it’s a bit like Berlin used to be: automatically great because it IS Berlin or the startup world. In the midst of the half-baked hustle and bustle, many people walk around with a kind of inner enlightenment. Life as a digital nomad has almost begun. All that’s left to do is lie down on the beach with your laptop and wait for the money bag to come rushing down. :))
As a person who had already seen the scene up close in the 2000s and has now been self-employed or an entrepreneur or whatever you want to call it for over 10 years… I only have one thing on my mind:
No, the world is not always rosy in a start-up.
In the meantime, there are international providers (and I’m not trying to denigrate them or others per se) who supposedly want to save people from this “bad office world”.
But seriously:
Life as a freelancer or in a startup doesn’t save the world per se. Nor does it save you.
Suddenly you not only have your content job, but you also have to market what you do so that you can still do it in a few years’ time.
Everything, absolutely everything depends on you and your manpower.
You don’t even have the luxury of complaining that your colleague doesn’t take your vacation replacement seriously enough, because there is no replacement at all.
There is always and everywhere: You. Only you.
(all this is usually also true for a long time in small to medium teams)
Even if you really like yourself, it can get a bit one-sided, can’t it?
You run into yourself quite often during the day and during the week.
What we should not get mixed up:
Happiness and fulfilment in life and work are not about NOT working in a corporation, an established company or a start-up per se.
It’s about finding a job and, thus, tasks in life that involve you and your natural talens, a place where you can contribute.
People are insanely individual. None of us here exists twice.
Naturally, the types are also distributed a little – and the Foursight model, for example, illustrates very well that not everyone is an Early Stage person – and doesn’t have to be!
With the stupid startup mania, far too many people are being pushed into these build-up situations that
- really are not made for it
- who find it difficult to contribute well in such a vague and uncertain situation
- and/or for whom this is not good at all.
We need people who build things up.
We also need people who improve what already exists.
And we need people who like to maintain and preserve what already exists.
As in a well-mixed garden, we need all these varieties – and not just one.
People remain people – even on a small scale and in the good people sector
Escaping to small teams and companies
Think about it: You might have more team spirit in a small group, but also more peer pressure. If you no longer like the environment there, you have to change the whole company. If you are in a larger structure, it may be enough to change the area and the topic. That is already much safer. And if safety is important to you… well, that’s ok.
Escaping to the NGO
People are not inherently more good-natured just because they work in an NGO or “in something with a purpose”. It’s still all about vanity, status and power – perhaps not so much in the form of the company car, but on the dimensions of who gets more visibility or budget for their topics. It’s still about rewards, just the details differ.
Please please please, don’t let it get to you:
Life is not suddenly rosy just because you leave the ‘evil corporation’.
Work always remains work. But work is better when it suits us – and we should make sure that this is the case.
But even then, a good life will always be an uncomfortable life and it is not more comfortable per se because it happens in a smaller environment.
[themify_quote]The bottom line is that the great longing for more meaning, more ego, more creativity, etc. is a real feast, especially for those who use it as a kind of modern indulgence.[/themify_quote]
The search for meaning is then handled along the lines of a “the more the better” approach – especially when it comes to money spent on brain-balming seminars. The assumption is it can only be effective if it costs enough money and if the person behind it is/looks very authoritative. When I tell people that finding that meaning might not be easy but it is basically for free, you will be looked at as if you are very dubious (already happened, really).
Start-ups also benefit from this narrative, as they naturally no longer feel bound by working hours or similar (nothing new in that sense – that was already the case in the past – and that is probably also in the nature of things).
The winners of the game are clever companies that – surprise – don’t run a non-profit (even if they almost appear to) but a profit company. They don’t offer expensive seminars just like in the nightly infomercials BECAUSE they love you SO much BUT above all, because they can make money with them and you let them them be successful with it.
There is no way around having a truly honest conversation with yourself, challenging yourself, making yourself uncomfortable, and always forming an independent opinion about what is good for you (because only you can know).
Everything worthwhile takes time, much more time and more effort. That is ok, and it must be considered to be ok.
And otherwise, it is also perfectly fine to lead a very normal and, in my opinion, completely average and startup-free life, as long as one thing is true:
That you are at peace with yourself.
[Image (slightly edited by me) by StevePB – thanks!]