I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy having a regular supply of interesting problems to solve, and the daily routine keeps me grounded.

It's the money, generally. Life is expensive.

I don't want to work in order to survive but I want to be productive and keep my mind and body sharp while also contributing to the community. I like my job and while it seems mundane, it keeps me busy, gives me routine, gives my brain problems to solve, and is sometimes the most socializing I get. I just hate that I have to be afraid to lose my job or end up hungry or homeless because of it.

Important distinction between "working" and "having a job". You do a job for someone else. You should always be working for yourself. Labor for ones own ends in enjoyable. Labor for someone else is a means to an end. Recognize it is something to balance and balance it the best you can for the life you want to have.

Place and purpose baby! Working for someone/being exploited sucks shit, sure, but doing stuff is awesome. What else are you gonna do?

There's so many different jobs and situations out there, not everything is doom and gloom with employment or work. I assume you're in school, which usually takes up just as much (if not considerably more) of your time commitment.

I might be an outlier, but I enjoy working. I like what I do. I also like having money.

Most days, when I get home, I do whatever housework is needed and still have time to spend with my family, work on home projects, or relax and play a game or whatnot.

Take care of yourself by exercising and eating right, find a job you enjoy, and you won't be dead tired after work. Granted, there are occasional days when I'm exhausted, but they're the exception, not the norm.

I'm middle age, and as much as you are not looking forward to working, that's how I feel about retirement. I don't know if I will ever retire, not because of money, but because I think I'd get bored.

He who does not work, neither shall he eat

Good workplaces are like the after-school extracurricular classes, you go because you're interested, it's fun to problem-solve with people.

I have to be regularly told to go home at the end of the day.

Going to the same place 5 days a week

A lot of jobs involve travel, on a variety of scales. My brother is a civil engineer and is on a different site every week. I personally like the routine of going to the same place, but that's not a requirement for employment.

coming home with no time and energy left

I mean, that sucks. But you don't necessarily have to work that many hours or that demanding a job. I do work a physically and emotionally demanding job; I prefer to work on personal projects and household tasks during the day, go to my job in the evenings, and then it doesn't matter that I come home tired; I go right to bed.

for anything you actual like

A lot of people like their job. Another respondent said she wouldn't do her job for free; I probably would if I could afford to. It makes me happy. I can't afford to and am pretty zealous about making sure I earn a competitive rate, but I even enjoy that aspect, the competition of it.

doing this for FOURTY years or even more

I mean, it doesn't have to be the same work that while time. At forty, I've been a programmer, a teacher, a waitress, and a full-time parent. I'm thinking about picking up a trade, becoming an electrician or a carpenter or a plumber. As long as you keep learning and keep experimenting, you'll have an interesting life.

When you ask a question like this in a place like this, understand that you're going to be getting replies from people who have jobs where you can sit around and be bored on the internet

Its a fuckin nightmare, but gotta eat

Just remember, work to live not live to work.

Allow me to come at this from the other side.

I can't work. My body gave out, and even though the shit show that is disability income keeps me below the poverty line, I'm essentially useless at any job that requires me being upright. So, I'm stuck there.

But if I could go back to work, I would.

I'd want to be picky at this point, but there's a lot to be said about having structure and an external purpose (as opposed to finding one within yourself, which is still possible while working, just not necessary).

Since my job was at least emotionally and mentally fulfilling, I do miss the actual work ad well. I mean, fuck the industry and the actual available employers, but doing direct patient care was fucking awesome, even when it was stressful or painful (be it physical or mental pain).

The pay sucked. Bad enough that even working full time, I technically have a higher income now than when my hourly rate was at its highest back then. But going in, helping someone, that was the shit right there.

I could have gladly done the hands on work for forty years. Even though most days I was exhausted at the end of the day. If you're lucky enough to have a job that fulfills you, the only problem is when you can't take breaks from it, or when the broken system means you can't make a real living doing it.

I recently had a loved one have a major medical event. During the aftermath, I had plenty of chances to use my old skills, and it was one of the few bright points that got me through the fear and stress of it. There was still that old joy at really, truly helping someone get better, to have a less bad day at the very least.

But, legit, there's other things I could gladly make a job of if I were both physically capable and could make enough for it the be worthwhile.

What sucks for what you're asking is having to work just for survival ata job that isn't fulfilling.

That being said, I've known a ton of people that were quite happy being a cog in the machine as long as the pay was enough to let them live how they wanted.

Besides, you don't have to plug away at the same blah job the entire time. It's entirely possible to not only switch jobs, but move into different industries. Like, one of my uncles over his almost sixty years of working was a prison guard, a foundry worker, a school custodian, a woodworking instructor at a high school, and a mill worker. When he'd get tired of something, he'd just start looking for something with similar pay (or better) and jump ship. He bitches about being bored now that he's retired.

I'd say aquire as many skills as you can so that one day you can work independently and also save money on things you can do yourself like house repairs or renos. We all need to work to survive but capitalism (unfairness, inequality, abuse...) has made life miserable to millions. The system sucks but you can learn to switch between the system and your lifestyle. Prioritize your life and never be a slave to anyone.

Find something you genuinely enjoy doing.

Also, having moneyz is nice.

The question is, what else would you be doing with your time?

I mean... we gotta eat.

We like to be useful. Pitching in and doing our share and making/doing things for other people who do the same for us feels good. Its a large part of what got us here and not living in caves dying of infection.

Recently its become perverted though. There's not enough satisfaction from being a useful member of society, and too much of the guys above you shouting "more! Faster! Better! I can replace you so easily!"

If your really worried about working do your best to find a work place that is fun rather than a workplace that maximizes your income. Assuming you have interests try and find a job that plays to those interests and it helps to feel like your actually helping people rather than being another cog in the machine.

I think pretty much everyone wants to feel useful and like they're contributing to society. I also think the modem idea of a job is awful and oppressive, but I think that's more of a problem with capitalism. If we had a better economic system, I think we'd have a better relationship with work. I know that if I didn't have to worry about making money to survive, I wouldn't be lazy and fuck off all the time, there's so many projects I would do and help others with. I suspect that's true for at least 99% of people.

But we live under capitalism right now and many people choose to accept that and try to be happy with wage slavery. "If you get a decent job that makes decent money, it's not so bad." But I think we'd be a lot healthier and happier if we rebuilt the system from the ground up.

I grew up on a subsistence farm. Everyone always worked. Every single day of the year. Some days were very long, some were short depending on what needed to be done. To survive. Of course we had fun and time off as well. It's about balance. Most people don't have to do back to the land subsistence living anymore because they substituted living in cities and taking paying jobs to buy what they need. No matter the path, you still have to do some sort of work to live. You can choose which path to some extent. There are small farms looking for people to come work for them in exchange for room and board.

It’s either work or twerk and i aint got that kind of body

FWIW maybe an office job isn’t for everyone. Some people need different challenges and changes of scenery. Some of those jobs may be a bit more blue collar. Things like survey teams, equipment operators, trades, etc. Probably union gigs, too. I couldn’t handle office politics or being trapped either.

Try to get a job you enjoy. For example I had a friend who liked tinkering with cars, he got a job as a auto mechanic. Some days he would be tired after work but on most Saturdays he would still be outside replacing/installing something on his own car.

I liked fixing things and solving problems. The joy when everything worked as it should and the machine started up. Having a problem in mind and breaking it down to separate components then understanding how it all interconnected and then seeing where the failure was. My favorite job was as a engineering technician.

I worked with someone who was going through a rough patch of life(had back issues due to previous job, his wife left him and they were fighting over custody). He straight up told the manager he just wanted a basic job that didn't require him to think and he could just get into a zone of work. He was given such a job, basically put unit in machine one, press start, take unit out, clean off burrs with file, blow off with compressed air, put unit in machine two, take unit out and pass it to next station. He didn't know how the machines worked or did he want to. He would call me over when something went wrong or the machines weren't working right. That said holy shit could he put out a lot of work. His average was about 1.5 times what was expected out of most people, his peak was over 2 times.

Don't make your favorite hobby your career or you will likely end up with both a hobby and job you hate. Find something adjacent to your favorite hobby.

There are two layers in this question.
In the literal sense, they want to work because it does something for them. For some, work is means to an end. They want to do X but they can't survive on profits from doing X so they spend some time working to do the thing that they feel actually adds meaning to their life. The other layer of this is the fear you are experiencing because you are staring into an abstract void. 'Work' can mean many, many different things. Quick peek at your Lemmy history says you have some interest in books. What if it was your 'work' to spend hours each day getting paid to read books, as an audio book reader, a literary editor, or something similar? What if it was your 'work' to spend hours each day being paid to write books as an author, or a journalist? Work can be hellish if you end up doing something you hate, for and with people you hate, to produce something you feel is making the world a worse place to live. It can also be a process of going somewhere pleasant, to do things you enjoy, with and for people you like, to produce something that you feel makes the world a better place. Work is just the label on the box. It doesn't tell you much about what's inside.

People don't want to work. They want to live and pay for shit. Work is the only way for people that weren't born rich to get money. Well, either that or crimes, but some crimes can be seen as illegal work.

Most people don't want to feel useless, so if you cut their access to cheap dopamine (phones with internet, social media) they might seek out some work out of boredom.

What really sucks is that society expects us to be "specialists" in one thing for the rest of our lives, as if we are fucking ant drones or gears in a complex machine. It's great for economists and the rich and awful for our individual wellbeing, though some people do enjoy doing the same thing over and over for very long periods of time.

I don't understand people who do NOT want to work! Sure, it's nice being home having nothing to do for a few days, but then what? I start feeling bored and useless and I want to contribute and feel useful again.

I had the same dread when I was your age. In hindsight I can see a lot of it was because my childhood sucked therefore my perspective on life sucked. I just didn't know any different then. When I moved away on my own everything changed. I actually enjoyed being an adult and it all came down to freedom. I was in charge of me. I could do whatever I wanted, good or bad. Having to work to support that freedom suddenly didn't seem so bad.

So here's the thing, many people hate their jobs and just work them because they don't really see any other option than to keep working the job they hate, but also plenty of people really enjoy their jobs. Depending on your interests you might have to get a little creative or try something you'd never thought about or something you've never heard of

If you enjoy problem solving (a very common human trait), there's some lucrative corporate careers out there in things like project management, asset management or even just straight management. If you just want to zone out and listen to podcasts and audiobooks all day there's tons of machine operator jobs that will absolutely fill that role (and often in small towns with very low costs of living as an added bonus) if you want to just get paid go hike there's jobs to be had in surveying and land management. If you like working with animals the ag sector has you covered, and if you like working with your hands there's always tons of jobs in trades. If you like helping people there's the healthcare sector and if that's too much blood there's always medical coding or outside of the healthcare sector there's tons of banks out there looking for loan officers who will talk to people and fill in the blanks on the forms. Sales is also very lucrative and very cushy if you can get into B2B sales. There's tons of jobs that exist and every job is different, so there's bound to be one out there that scratches an itch for you and you can enjoy (or at least not actively hate)

And this is all assuming you want to work for someone else, you can always start something on the side while keeping another job that pays the bills, or if you have a supportive partner who's willing to cover the bills while you take you shot at a business. Go start a hardwood furniture business, or find an obscure thing that nobody makes anymore and start making those. Go create an event that people can buy tickets to attend. Open a bar or a store or a pilates studio! Buy an old building on some unfarmable land and create a winery or fish farm or wedding venue! Sell pancakes out of your garage! Paint murals for people! Grow mushrooms to sell at the farmers market! Start a commune or a bus tour company or a bike taxi! Is it hard? Absolutely. Will there be roadblocks and challenges to overcome? Indubitably! But overcoming these challenges is fulfilling in itself and plenty of people start businesses successful enough for them to retire off of (or at least successful enough to sell to someone else who can make it successful enough to retire off of)

There are jobs with flexible hours and partial or full work from home arrangements, and more importantly jobs where you can feel some amount of purpose and personal growth instead of just making money (mostly for someone else, i.e. shareholders). To get such a job you might have to get some specialized skill, or just get lucky.

I guess its more the need to. I would Work less If affordable. 

I have colleagues I Look up to. Most of the time I Work independently, without a Manager interrupting.

Humans are social animals, and we want to feel useful to and accepted by the group.

Furthermore, some amount of work is always required to survive. It's pretty naturally baked into our brains.

Due to an inheritance of barely-enough money, I got to retire at age 55. I might need to go back to work in a few years, I don't know yet. But, I've very much enjoyed doing practically nothing even though I'd like to have enough to travel, etc. which I don't. I do miss the collaboration on solving problems, but I don't miss the raft of other bullshit "office politics" that goes along with that. The one does not make up for the other, not even close. Neither do I miss putting aside my occasional moral misgivings about a project in exchange for money. Nor do I miss watching the boss/owner make obviously stupid decisions and then watching the fallout, after not listening to me or anyone else.

Finding a perfect job is not going to happen for the vast majority of us. We make do with what we can get, and often that causes long-term stress that is unhealthy.

What desire I have to "be useful" or "contribute" and the pleasure I sometimes got from a job well done pales in comparison to the daily stress of working. Even low-level long-term stress takes a big toll over time. And, none of us are compensated nearly enough in money or time off to mitigate that.

People want to work, and want to contribute and collaborate, and feel useful. But, the work society we've allowed to be set up for us is not for that. It's for wringing every last second of useful to-the-rich effort out of us, while compensating us at the minimum level we'll accept without chopping their heads off, with the rest going to them. Generation after generation for the past 80 years, they've been compensating us less and demanding more. Now we're close to being virtually enslaved, owning nothing and working to barely survive, assuming we're healthy enough to do so, otherwise being discarded.

Don't let the fake world of earning money fuck you up. People want to move and dance and do great things naturally. Most need money to eat and stay warm though and those two things are rarely aligned. If you were a multi-trillionaire would you just want to lay on the beach all day doing nothing?

Don't worry, thanks to climate change and unchecked corporate capitalism, you'll most likely not be able to work at one place for 40 years.

If you are in America and a legal adult, go see a doctor, try to get diagnosed with something that counts towards disability, then try to stay employed for at least 10 years then claim disability (generally about 10 years but look up the SSA rules for specifics), which will allow you avoid work and recieve a small amount of money that's generally impossible to live off of and severely limits what you can actually do and gives you free (but mediocre) healthcare. I haven't worked since the last day of 2019 because my new years resolution for 2020 was to not work anymore. I'm currently 43. I have ADHD, dyscalculia and I'm Bipolar.

If that's not your thing, start your own business, doesn't matter what and you don't need to actually have any revenue, just start it so you have it on paper that it exists. Then while you figure out how to stay alive using other means, you might get lucky and find some corporate dick who wants power that will buy your company for a ludicrous amount without actually knowing that you have no revenue ot staff or a product or any services. They just need it as a shell company anyways, so they can launder money and avoid paying taxes.

One other angle and the most legal and honorable one to try, is determine your two favorite hobbies. Turn one into your job focus and the other becomes the one you continue to enjoy in your free time. This method allows you to also have a backup, in case the job hobby doesn't work out. Eventually the hobby you still enjoy, if you still enjoy it, can be converted into a source of funding, provided you continually improve in it and network with other people who also enjoy it.

No one likes working except for a few psychos. Everyone else does so begrudgingly. The trick is to find the least awful job you can stand to do or become one of the psychos. It took me 15 years to find a job that didn't make me dread waking up every morning, now I only dread most mornings. Luckily one day I'll be dead because theres no hope for retirement at the rate the world is going to shit.

only slightly /S

There are many reasons. One is just wanting to know your contributing. Sorta goes with the good days work for a good days pay. Although given pay nowadays is more of a reason not to work. Then there is doing things you are interested in and enjoy. I worked IT for a cs research visualization lab that did a fair amount of networking and colloboration with other labs and fields. It was amazing. Worked at another place were I was hired by a guy and I enjoyed working under him and with the people at the company. Man he left and the job lost a lot of what made it decent. Other places I worked had some good folks and you combine that with my general interest in problem solving the whole contributing thing and its not bad. Granted though I really hate the way we from full time education to full time employment to nothing (if your lucky). would love a citizens income and a more 3 day work week so that the general idea is at some point to work and go to school 3 days a week each and then you fnd someone and have kids you can split it to someone is at home everyday and when they are grown you maybe can grab more educations and it would be nice for the 30 to ramp down as you approach retirment.

I mean, isn't school a bit like that?

I absolutely despise work. If there was any way to survive while living alone in a studio apartment or trailer home without having to go to a job I'd do it in a heartbeat. I work a much better job now than I was from 2014-2025, but that's only cause the pay is better and I listen to podcasts all day instead of being forced to interact with people. I still feel my soul being drained when I wake up at 3 AM and have to drag myself there just to do some B's I'd rather not do, but I don't have any other choice given I can't find anything that will pay better without experience or wasting years on a piece of paper.