For Happy Life



 9 out of 10 people make a living instead of living. They are not happy about work and their lives have been reduced to weekends and holidays, says the expert on freedom at work.

            The interview was originally published on the Black Swan portal and we are publishing it in cooperation with the Comenius Institute.

     We are taught to live by making a living and then buying fun. That is why we have to do work that we do not like and we need all the more fun, says TOMÁŠ HAJZLER. He first worked for a corporation until he got burnout. Then he became interested in what conditions must be at work for people to be happy in it. He says that it is necessary to see the meaning in it, which, according to him, is not possible in a bank today, for example.

The burnout syndrome is said to be very difficult for a person to observe. You went through it. How did you notice that?

It's like a frog that cooks so slowly that he doesn't even notice. In my case, it happened that one day I couldn't get out of bed. I fell asleep tired, I got up tired until one day I decided to go to the doctor instead of going to work. They did some tests on me, diagnosed me with Lyme disease and burnout.

What did your life look like before burning?


I had a job, I worked in GE Money marketing, which was a relatively demanding job from I can't see to I can't see. In addition, my African friend and I opened two African art stores, at the same time I did an MBA remotely, I went to school on the weekends, and I also tried to have some relationship and life. So I worked on three fronts and logically my body couldn't do it. Especially I don't know how to turn my head off too much, I still think about something and then I sleep badly.

What you describe sounds like fatigue. What happened when you couldn't get out of that bed anymore?


Physically, the body did not manage in my case, but above all I was mentally poisoned, I had zero zest for life and it was enough that I noticed the computer, and I was already sick. So I was just kind of lying, my body was actually alive, but at the same time it was lifeless, it seemed to evaporate, something literally burned there.

What happened after you were diagnosed with burnout? Did you do something to keep it from happening again?


Well, it didn't happen… I feel like I just have it in me. A kind of inability to see what the projects I'm committed to will take time. When I burned down, the first thing I did was interrupt my MBA and transfer African business to someone else. My relationship also broke up, so it was resolved somehow (laughs). So all I had left was a job, and that's where I met my wife Peta, with whom I bought a ticket to California. When we returned from Chile after six months, we did not return to work. If it weren't for the burnout, I might be employed by a corporation today and doing something I don't like.

You say you didn't enjoy working in a corporation, but you still put so much energy and time into it that it led you to burnout. So how is it possible that you wanted to invest so much in it?


This is an interesting question that I still ask myself when I think of the people who still work in such corporations. It is not true that I did not enjoy it, but when I think about it in retrospect, it did not fulfill me at all, because the work is largely simply meaningless. I worked in the financial division in the multiservice section, which is an installment sale with huge interest rates, where people take small amounts and have contracts with the small print. From today's point of view, it is very ugly - the largest department in the company was the debt collection department.

     There were a lot of "dopamine kicks" like project presentations, great meetings, new ideas, and I got a lot of money for it. I don't know if you've heard of the "shit work" phenomenon. The term was invented by the British anthropologist David Graeber (in the original bullshit jobs) and refers to a huge amount of work that, if it ceased to exist, you would either not notice it or even enjoy it. Mine was a typical shit job. What is fascinating otherwise is that the more shit work is, the more it is paid, and conversely, the more real it is, the less one earns. When you look at how much teachers, paramedics, farmers, drivers or builders earn compared to all sorts of managers, it's actually absurd. For shit work, you get a beautifully polished car, a benefit here and a benefit there, and as your health deteriorates, you benefit from health care in a private facility.

You talk about working in a corporation very negatively. Do you think that it is possible to do work there in which you see meaning and you do not get burnout syndrome?


      I think there can definitely be places where work can be very meaningful. These are mostly people who direct the corporation's energy and money to something that is beneficial and meaningful to everyone. However, when we look at the system and development phase of the organization, ie a publicly traded large company, its mission is to maximize profits for anonymous shareholders while outsourcing - that is, passing on to others - damages.