Is a Bad Day of Fishing Better Than a Good Day at work?
A popular idiom among the working class: A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work. In other words, regardless of what happened during your day, it is still better than any possible day at work. On the surface, this seems like a good outlook on life. Your value your life more outside of work than you do work. That logically makes sense.
Sadly it could actually be a defeating mindset. The main reason is that it can deprive you of a purpose in life. Work allows us to pursue a purpose in affecting the world around us. It allows us to change the lives of others around us. Finding that job/purpose is one of the most essential things in life.
Thinking that anything is better than work is like saying anything is better than my purpose in life. Now not everyone finds a purpose in life. But that is an exception to the rule. The vast majority of people find their purpose in life in their work. That’s why when people ask “what do you do?” we respond with our job.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Believing this idiom will leave you lost in purpose in life in the long run if you think that no work will ever be as fulfilling as leisure time then you never look for a meaningful job. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that work will never be as good as leisure time then you will never work for a purposeful job. If you don’t have a purposeful job then you will think that nothing else is better than work.
Finding a purposeful job is important because then you feel productive. When feeling productive you accomplish more things you want to do in life. This is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more stuff you get done, the more things you want to get done. Thus leading you to be more productive.
These are your life spirals. You can either be spiraling upwards or down. This is why we see life as a rollercoaster. When things are going well, everything seems to be going well. When things are going bad, everything seems to be going bad. The energy feeds off itself. So when saying: A bad of fishing is better than a good day at work it sets yourself up for a negative spiral. The best way to fix this is to find a job that gives you purpose.