Do you love your job?  Do you jump out of bed every morning thrilled by the prospect of another day at work?

I’m lucky enough to really love my work.  I find it rewarding, meaningful and interesting – you can’t ask for much more than that.  Of course there are aspects of the job that are less than thrilling (preparing financial documents tops the list for me!) but I have had enough dud jobs in my life to know that things could be a lot worse.

One part of our work as personal injuries lawyers is that we have to fully understand what is involved in our client’s jobs.  Obviously if someone is injured at work then we need to understand the system of work that caused the injury.  However, even if a client is injured away from work, we need to look at their job and the extent to which the injury is likely to effect their ability to work.

The great thing about this is that it gives us a great sense of perspective.

My 6 year old has been saying for ages that she wants to be a teacher.  This week she suddenly announced that she didn’t want to be a teacher anymore.  I asked what had changed her mind.  She said that she had seen the teachers going to Thrass training (something to do with the way in which they teach phonics I think…) and it sounded hard and boring and she didn’t want to do that.  Her brother’s response was “there is no such thing as an easy job”.

I pointed out that there are easy jobs but all jobs come with different challenges.  Boredom is just as bad as high pressure.

My Dad’s first job at the age of 15 was in a drawing pin factory.  He had to watch the blanks pouring through the machine to make sure they did not get stuck.  If they did then  he had to free them so that the blanks could still be made into pins.  Dad went on to work as a farm labourer, jackaroo, property manager, meat inspector and small business owner.  These jobs were usually physically demanding, sometimes dangerous and were often high pressure but he still says the mind numbing boredom of that drawing pin job was the absolute worst.

I often think of that when I am working with clients who work on assembly lines.  Luckily, employers have usually worked out that they need to rotate people between jobs but there are still some really boring jobs out there.  Many of these clients do not work anything like the hours of the average lawyer but I suspect that each hour feels a lot longer.

So if you feel yourself struck by a sudden burst of Mondayitis, think long and hard about whether the grass truly is greener.