UKH

”the feeling that nothing brings any enjoyment or sense of satisfaction”

Idle pondering after reviewing the content of the 'leadership' course my employer has kindly enrolled me on. The attendees are a mix of bright, ambitious and irritatingly positive people desperate to get to the top and, to be frank, people like me. Jaded, cynical individuals who the company's had to promote to keep hold of due to niche skills and who read the words “Human beings are fundamentally social creatures” and think “Not in my case, Pal”.

Whilst I'm quite skilled at presenting as a functional human being during working hours, I'm intrigued by the concept of “celebrating” achievements and being “passionate” about goals (the sort of stuff that oozes from this course I'm doing). It struck me that I've never really applied adjectives like that to pretty much anything in life, let alone work.

Don't get me wrong, there's stuff I quite like doing, and it's quite nice to be invited to a BBQ or something, but not to an all consuming level. I don't think I'm clinically depressed or anything, just that my whole attitude to life since I can remember has been pretty much 'Meh'.

Anyone else like this?

In reply to Ridge:

I find its best if I avoid courses like that.  Sometimes I feel compelled to talk, I try not to.  There was one training course I was on that nearly pushed me over the edge.  It was on the theory of teaching in higher education, delivered with some of the worst examples of audience engamgent and teaching practices I've ever seen, by a scientist and a social scientist who moved from their respective fields to the pedagogy of higher education.  The year before someone suddenly stood up in the middle of it, screamed, shouted "this is all bulls**t" and ran out.  

I do worry about niche technical skills and their future in this Modern Environment.  I tend to land on my feet due to my ability at various niche technical skills, rather than any strong internal desire to achieve or to "better myself" by way of courses where people point at triangles with words on (which they insist on mis-labelling as pyramids).   

There's nothing wrong with being honest with yourself about what you do - and don't want out of life.  We're all going to end up as compost, ash, atomised and radioactive molecules or dog food at the end of the day.

In reply to Ridge:

Isn't ennui a Farrow & Ball paint colour?  A shade lighter than mole's breath with a bit more beige in it.

In reply to wintertree:

Thanks for planting that thought.

Oh God, I'm going to have to say that.

In reply to Ridge:

My ex used to say that she's never known someone with so many acquaintances but so few friends. Friends and generally being sociable require reciprocal effort, I'm not the sort of person who likes to waste people's time so if I can't provide that I tend to not bother. Much easier to have a few people you can call on to go for a walk with or hop on the bikes for an afternoon than constantly be needing to meet requirements so you aren't labelled selfish or a "bad friend." Some would say that I was anti-social, I prefer to say I mostly enjoy my own company without having to cater for somebody else.

In reply to Ridge:

A lot of your comments strike a chord with me. I think as you get older you begin to realise that the 'end' is getting closer and there is less willingness to waste time on other people's BS. After the year we've all had I've decided that time is short and I should try to do more than just get up, work and sleep. My father died when he was only a year older than I am now. There is quite a lot of crap pushed towards me at work and being good at the job doesn't bring any extra reward. I'm cutting my days down (if I don't get sacked for having a waspish sense of humour!). I reckon no-one actually believes the 'celebrating' and 'passionate' guff but they go along with it to climb the slippery pole. 

In reply to Ridge:

Whilst I certainly wouldn’t say that nothing brings me enjoyment or satisfaction, I can relate to some of what you’ve said there. I certainly think I have a fairly flat range of emotional expression/experience compared to many. 

I think it’s just normal variation in personality. If you picture it as waves, some people have higher peaks and deeper troughs than others. The trade off for all that ‘passion’ and ‘celebration’ you are seeing is often a greater sensitivity to difficult emotions too. And vice versa; while I am often pretty ‘meh’ when others are celebrating, I also stay pretty calm and balanced when the going gets tough and others are losing their heads.

A lot of the time there seems to be an assumption that extroversion and similar or related traits are the ideal to strive for. In reality there are always pros and cons to wherever we sit on the personality spectrum.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

In the modern AI era, that's either "Bunflow" or "Stummy Beige"

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/an-ai-invented-a-bun...

In reply to wintertree:

I don’t know what the fuss is about in that article - those make about as much sense as most I’ve seen on sample sheets. Although I’ll concede that Turdly might not turn out to be a bestseller…

In reply to lboutside:

That is so me - I tend to turn up, meet people, do the thing (cycle/climbd/paddle etc etc) then disappear until the next time - none of this lingering afterwards, going for a coffee or to a cafe, then constantly being in touch by phone/text/message etc - until the next time I feel like going out with these people again, then repeat

In reply to Ridge:

It's a shame that "passionate" as a leadership quality has been so thoughtlessly trotted out on so many uninspiring training courses that it is now mostly seen as bullshit terminology. In a previous incarnation I was a secondary headteacher. Any head who isn't genuinely passionate about getting the best for their kids and their school needs the sack. If you don't have that real passion you're not going to do the 60+ hour weeks for year after year that it takes. I'd be ashamed if I hadn't been passionate about such a privileged job.

On the other hand, now I'm retired I do the odd bit of work at the local climbing wall. Passionate about being the best belay teacher I can be? I confess - not quite so much.

In reply to subtle:

I know a few people who have friendships like that, daily chats, always in and out of each other's homes, meet up at least once or twice a week. It's funny how much s**t they talk about one another to me when I meet them separately and it's stuff like that which makes me keep people at arms length. They're not bad people in general, but if that's what friendship is like I'd rather just keep it casual and for the most part have my life remain drama free

In reply to Ridge:

Are you an engineer?

Is your course developed and run by your HR department?

In reply to captain paranoia:

I wasn't passionate enough about being one to be motivated enough to go to Uni to be a proper one, but something along those lines.

Nope. The limits of our HR is writing nonsensical job descriptions that attract the wrong candidates and put off the right ones from applying in the first place.

These are 'consultants' who have profile pictures showing them gazing attentively at clients whilst jotting things in moleskine notebooks using pens that cost more than my mobile phone.

In reply to Stuart Williams:

It's part of the “H Block” range.

In reply to captain paranoia:

That was my first thought. Engineering companies seem to think everyone wants to be in a leadership role and forget that we need technical experts and that there should be a suitable financial reward for that expertise and the only path to financial betterment need not be the ability to hoodwink a client......

In reply to Ridge:

Ah, even worse than corporate HR. Their level of bullshit is so high, they've managed to impress the HR department into employing them.

I'm sure they'll be expecting you to enter the Dream phase of Appreciative Enquiry...

In reply to Ridge:

Ah...the sort of people who put descriptions such as life coach, trendsetter and chief visionary on their LinkedIn profile to look impressive to other people focussed on hollow titles and blowing smoke up their own backsides haha

In reply to captain paranoia:

Many years ago I was sent on a 5-day course designed to teach researchers how to be entrepreneurs.  Having run out of ideas by the first afternoon, we had a 1-hour case study of "left shifting" and how it helped a particular project.

The idea was that a graph of "how much work is being done" vs "time" for a project tends to go up more on the right as deadlines approach.  Their radical suggestion was that one could do more work, sooner, thus shifting it left on the time axis, or "left shifting", thus giving more time in which to deal with any identified problems.

This was all delivered by a straight face to a largely receptive audience who asked what appeared to be earnest questions.  

I kid ye not.

In reply to Ridge:

More like weltschmerz than ennui 

In reply to Ridge:

Isn't this the cross that us middle age white men now have to bear? I think its because we don't get sent off to fight in wars anymore, or grind our health down to nothing doing tedious but backbreaking work - down a pit or in a foundry and so on. Most of us don't get to hit things with hammers or dig things with shovel (or shoot things with rifles). So most of us are left with a sense of it all being a bit rubbish and annoying, and that we're missing out on something more interesting or fulfilling, although we also feel guilty for knowing we still have it much better than 98% of the world's population.

And so adventure sports - whether it is climbing above a bolt knowing you're probably too weak to make it to the next one, or deciding to go out in the middle of a blizzard because some waterfall is 'in', I'm sure I wouldn't have the urge to do such things if I had had to fight in real war.

Having said that, I think my ice tool collection is vaguely socially acceptable, and my urge to make sure I get up to Scotland next winter and do a grade V probably harmless. I fear had I been born in rural Pennsylvania not Worcestershire, it would be a collection of AR15s and Glocks and the urge would be to take on "the feds".

In reply to Ridge:

I'm not the only one then? Thank fcuk for that!

I have loads of interests and at the minute I'm going all in on my photography. Thats probably the closest I come to being passionate. But all these other folk online make out that you have to be passionate about something or you'll never be a success at it. Its a load of crap!!

Grumble! Moan! Middle age sucks.

edit: dear UKC, the swearing is entirely appropriate thenk you very much!

In reply to TobyA:

I bet you would! You’d quite likely spend any time you could in between being shot at remembering the places you’d been, routes you’d done, and dreaming of what you’d do if you ever got back in one piece!

In reply to Bob Kemp:

Actually, thinking about it, I never had to fight in a war but that’s exactly what I used to do in the kind of tedious events that Ridge describes…

In reply to EdS:

I've definitely got that!

In reply to Ridge:

I went on a leadership course and one aspect of it was Meyers-Briggs style personality types. Are you a wood, or fire, or water person? I pointed out I was uncomfortable with this and couldn't we use something more scientific, such as horoscopes? As there were HR people on the course, they didn't require me to participate in the practicals. So I had the joy or watching 'water' people talk to 'wood' and 'air' people.

I'm passionate in my field of work. So much so, that when my boss ignores the work I do, so creating risks for the business, I escalate it upwards or diagonally. It's not been well received by anyone; my boss or the recipients. That is not passion, I've been told, more like trouble making.

Celebrating is great for certain roles, sales people for instance. 'We sold £X million. Rah! Rah! Look at me, I'm so great'. From an engineering perspective, one can't really say: ' I spent ages ensuring that 'badthing', is less likely to happen, though it is still possible'. Much harder to put that on a graph.

In reply to wintertree:

I was sent on a corporate jolly to what was called "Sales University", a 5 day event with hundreds of us. Various "workshops" etc throughout each day. Lots of Powerpoint and flipcharts, thankfully not much "role play". 
Three of these massive events were set up globally (Europe, US and Far East) representing about £1-2 million of investment. 
For Europe we pretty much took over the Corinthia Hotel in Budapest for a week. 

The only two useful things I learned were things I could have taught there myself with zero experience in "sales". 
1) sneeze into your elbow, not your hand
2) outcome is more important than output

 

In reply to galpinos:

The leaders of engineering companies seem to think everyone wants to be in a leadership role...

In reply to Ridge:

my view has always been that you can't always choose your colleagues but you can and have every right to choose who you socialise with out of work.  Rarely that has included people from work but they have to be the right people ...(prepared to go outdoors/climbing or have something in common at least)

I reserve the right to avoid socialising with people from work with whom I know that I have nothing I value in common.  I'm sure they are happy with that too.

In reply to wintertree:

well that will certainly be true of some of the coordinates our stuff inhabits but we'll never know whether the other coordinates still exist too, where it DID matter

In reply to dread-i:

I'm not much passionate as resigned to the fact that my job is to tell people higher up the food chain things they don't want to hear, and that is career limiting, if not career ending in many organisations.

Fortunately, despite being several grades lower than I would have been if I just did as I was told, I've managed to hit the sweet spot between maximum pay for minimum dealing with idiots.

True, especially when no one thinks 'badthing' could possibly happen:

”Badthing only happens every 300 years...”

Did he really just say that? 

“...and as this plant will only operate for 50 years..”

Yep, he did. The ******** gormless ****

”..the risk is clearly insignificant”

Oh well, here we go again

In reply to Ridge:

Oh yes.  Having been involved in 'celebrating achievement', my muttered response was 'show me a token of your esteem that I can present to my bank manager'.   

There is a tale of a very introverted man who did something spectacular for his company.  His highly extrovert CEO decided that public recognition was the way forward, on a stage in front of hundreds of people.  It was probably the most traumatic event of the man's life and he left the following day.  I like to think that he sued them

In reply to wintertree:

Well, if it makes them realise that actually properly resourcing a project in the first place is better than throwing every single body at the problem, in an ineffective chaos as the deadline approaches, then they may have learnt something useful...

In reply to Ridge:

In my experience, it can come down to finding something which creates a sense of hoorah, or accidentally stumbling across it.

There's something known as 'depressive realism', too, having read about it, it involves a clear eyed view of humanity and of oneself, and life in general. I have an inner sense of transitioning slightly from 'depressive realism' to 'whoop', it's slightly odd, but there you go. I'd like to hold onto the accurate perception of one's reputation part if I can, and abilities, it seems useful. To be full of ego and blind spots is no good.

I wouldn't be any more enthused than yourself about the course, your feelings about it might just speak of the hollowness of corporate life? I wouldn't confuse ennui with recognising that.

Edit: My Dad managed his own company, and was asked by the people who bought him our how he'd managed to hold onto a small group of intelligent people doing R&D for as long as he had, and he said he basically left them to get on with things, ask if something was possible and leave them to work out how. Not very 'dynamic' I guess, but it worked, he figured they were capable enough to not need managing or leading.

In reply to Timmd:

Smile, tomorrow will be worse?

CB

In reply to cb294: I'm just outside the area of it I think, to be honest, in the area of 'kinda positive'.

In reply to Ridge:

'Ennui'

Walter Richard Sickert 1914)

In reply to Ridge:

I feel your pain - just wait until they get to the teambuilding and bonding exercises! I find faking an urgent incoming call on your mobile phone can get you out of a lot of these BS situations... "sorry, I'm on duty, I have to take this!"

In reply to Ridge:

You work in a pet food canning factory, right?  I often think how our prevailing wind comes across the hills from Cumbria.  

In reply to Greenbanks:

He must have got bored of painting nudes in Mornington Crescent by then...

In reply to Greenbanks:

At least the old geezer's got a drink and a smoke

In reply to Ridge:

That's the best description of my work situation that I've ever heard, I hope you don't mind if I steal it.

I got into a very good university to study electronic engineering. Lasted one term before I dropped out. I now have a business card that says "Senior Engineer" on it, but I still feel I'm being dishonest if I put engineer as my occupation.

In reply to galpinos:

Sadly, I don't think that's unique to engineering

In reply to wintertree:

Erm...yes.....petfood.

In reply to Ridge:

I was feeling a bit jaded. Due to some sort of management oversight I’ve been promoted into a senior-ish position. I’m quite enjoying it and still get to do technical stuff, whilst helping people develop, winning work and trying not to be too much of a wanker. However I’m being threatened with some sort of ninja 8 smegma course, so it might not last. 

We do safety and risk work, so I feel your pain explaining things over and over again, for 25 years. 

In reply to Ridge:

Yup.  Describes me to a "T".  I remember being sent (i.e. forced) to go on a team building course and hating every moment of it.  Cemented in my mind that absolutely the worst thing about my job was having to work with other assholes.  I'm reasonably sure the feeling was reciprocated with those unfortunate enough to have to work with me.

In reply to Ridge:

"Anyone else like this?"

Strangely I often found I suddenly had a holiday/dentist/court appearance booked most time these courses came up.

If forced to a hotel somewhere across the country I would take myself to the nearest bouldering or climbing wall rather than "networking" over a rubbish meal.

When asked to do a powerpoint presentation I turned the session into a workshop getting everyone out of their seats tasting different sweets making sure they were all high on sugar for the rest of the day. The facilitator didn't even notice I never used that Microshit tool.

Favourite animal = Stick insect (If I stay still enough you won't notice me)

If your company was a colour what colour would it be = Polite/Wednesday (anything random always upsets them)

I moved to contracting so I could be paid for my technical skills and more easily ignore management meetings. You can be more productive when not involved in them.

In reply to Ridge:

I think the Bard probably did better than 'meh':

I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.[1]

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

And the ending to one of the best films ever made

youtube.com/watch?v=yif5TIzaPYU&

In reply to Timmd:

The true goal of effective management is to support and nurture your staff to the point where they don’t need managing. They know you have their back and they’d hate to disappoint you. Best quote I read on the subject was this, “Good management is like oxygen. Nobody notices it’s there until it suddenly goes AWOL, at which point everyone notices”

I strongly suspect your Dad was a brilliant manager and had mastered that other key management technique;  let the team take all the credit.

In reply to Ridge:

Interesting thread to read through while sipping a pint on a rainy afternoon.

Seem to be a high proportion of people who find their Work and social lives pretty flat, which is entirely understandable at this point in 21st century Western civilisation. We’re mostly just too damn comfortable and without the catastrophic lows provided by death, destruction and suffering, the highs don’t seem quite so high and everything just gets a bit flat.
I’m sure many of you can fully appreciate the sublime joy of regaining the comfort of a warm car after some desperate winter epic etc and that feeling is a large part of what keeps motivating us back out again in conditions that are likely to provoke an interminable suffer fest. It’s so much fun when it stops! Despite striving for comfort a whole heap of us actually thrive on adversity, whether we know it or not.

Anyway, rainy afternoon, wet dog, dry pub. I am currently perfectly happy.

In reply to Ridge:

I feel a bit like this and I'm only in my early 30s. My fiancee keeps asking me why I can't get excited about anything (not like that get your minds out of the gutter) way far in advance like she can.  I see it as being more rational. Maybe in the last year everything being cancelled has added to this general feeling though.

I think one of the main things is I worry because I think I should be all hyped up and excited and obviously passionate about things. All power to those that do, but I prefer to take a more rational approach. I find the quiet passion for things that I really enjoy jars with a lot of the social media/commercial side that is more prevalent now than it was 15 years ago when I got into these things.

I enjoy my job and am proud of what I do and my company does (hell we're making a Covid vaccine, even if I have nothing to do with it directly - I just help cure cancer and the like...) but am pleased to be in a development department where we all seem to rub along well, support each other, have no histrionics, have similar dry/sarcastic senses of humour and crack on with our work which we take pride in doing. Oh and we have sensible mangers as well.

In reply to Nic Barber:

Good to know your canteen facilities are in order!

In reply to Ridge:

Being passionate about something is a great cover for being shite at it.

I'm passionate about climbing.

In reply to Stichtplate: I guess if work doesn't feel like it's inspiring, or useful enough to give meaning, that might make life 'feel flat'? My Dad was drawing bridges in school, and one time felt annoyed that that time his teacher hadn't noticed that he'd included the weights on the sides to stop a bridge he'd drawn from real life from swaying, making him finding meaning and purpose through working in engineering probably inevitable. I seem to have hit upon helping to get people to engage with nature as where I'd like to get to, on a personal or selfish level it's probably because I like being outside and chatting to people, but it's something which ticks the 'Is this worthwhile?' box too, that childing and adults might value it more and want to look after it after they have.  

In reply to Ridge:

Read the thread title and thought Ennui? Orinoco Flow wasn't too bad, impossible to dance to though!

In reply to Ridge:

H Block inmate goes to the prison doctor and says "Doc, I've got terrible diarrhoea"

Doc replies "What would you like for it, a brush or a roller?"

In reply to Hat Dude:

I preferred his spaghetti western soundtracks.

In reply to Hat Dude:

You weren't drinking enough

In reply to Ridge:

Anyone musing a soldiers' life as an antidote to ennui has really been watching the wrong war films. 

How many 9mm rounds can you fit in a man's foreskin?

44.

I can promise you have to be pretty bored to hunt answers to questions like that.