Jay Morrissey

I am not a fan of self-help. This must sound strange coming from a person who writes articles pertaining to issues of self. Though I intend for the site to be a dialogue of advice rather than a source for unnecessary personal development. This site is like the friend you hang out with at the bar after 2 am, not a self-help guru at a seminar.

I will never “change your life in 4 easy steps”, nor will you “become a better person” just by reading my articles. I believe life is more complicated than that. “4 easy steps” is great for cooking a recipe, but falls short in analysing the complexity of our life.

That said, I have read many books that have made a lasting impact on my life. With these words, I do not wish to discount the power of good advice. I simply want to make the point that the lessons you learn in life will always trump those you read in a book.

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Love is a wonderful thing. Without downplaying the importance of love and relationships, I do want to point out that “single” people among us are often discriminated.

Of course, the severity of this discrimination is minute compared to that of race, gender and sexuality. However, single people are made to (and often make themselves) feel like something is missing. There isn’t.

As “dating” and “getting married” are such common goals in our society, I wanted to address those who have decided not to adhere to these goals. You may be single, but you’re not alone.

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If you do not ask to be paid for additional hours requested by your employer, they will not pay you. For a relatively significant part of my professional life, I worked an inordinate number of unpaid hours beyond the usual 9 to 5.

In fact, my average work week was between 70 to 80 hours. Consultancy roles often called upon working weekends, lunchtimes, late nights, and even public holidays.

Our employment contracts stipulated that we are not to discuss salary or benefits with other employees. One late evening, this rule was broken. A distinguished colleague of ours revealed that he was indeed paid overtime. Between the seven of us, he was the only one who was able to negotiate this benefit.

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I used to tip-toe around the subject of money with my managers, so as not to discolour the dedication to my work. I soon found that employers pay you only what they need to.

If you cannot discuss money confidently with employers, your good intentions can soon be turned against you when you are overlooked for a pay increase. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way. I was a top performer but was seldom compensated because management knew I wouldn’t ask for more.

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Your expectation of salary needs to be discussed in a job interview, that is a given. When possible, you should not bring up the rate of pay and leave this for the interviewer.

I have been on both sides of this fence many times, I have played the role of an interviewer and an interviewee throughout my professional career. The single biggest mistake I have witnessed in a job interview is when an interviewee said “Before we bother starting this interview, how much does this job pay.” Yikes!

Career aspirations, wanting to gain experience, or working for our dream company are important factors in our happiness at work. Though we must not discount the importance of pay, as ultimately we are trading our valuable time for money. In a job interview, the interviewer will likely ask you, “What is your expectation of salary?” and “Are you flexible with your expectation?”.

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For some, the topic of money is just like any other. For others, the discussion of money can become uncomfortable, especially if it can make us appear greedy.

The discomfort we feel when discussing money with employers is perfectly natural, yet we should endeavour to develop the tactics and confidence to approach conversations that revolve around money. After all, the most important role of a career is to trade our time for money.

We want to be appreciated for our work, and do not want to appear “greedy” in the process. This is a topic that I relate close to. In my early years as an office worker, in an effort to be “polite” I avoided the discussion of money with my employers. As a result, I became severely underpaid compared to colleagues who had the confidence to discuss money with upper management.

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A concerning statistic in Western civilisation is the rapid increase in average daily work hours. The 9-to-5 schedule has now become a mere guideline by which folks voluntarily stack extra hours.

Personally, I have volunteered unpaid overtime for many reasons. To uplift my professional profile, to reduce the chances of being retrenched, to qualify for upcoming promotions, and for the respect of my managers and colleagues. I have discovered though that working overtime without asking for reimbursement achieves none of these goals. In fact, I will demonstrate why this behaviour will work against you, and your colleagues.

If you are a hard working individual, or have kids who are starting out in the corporate environment, please read through and discuss these issues with them. There is no hypothesis here, I have learned these difficult truths firsthand and I hope you can teach it to others.

I will start with a discussion on young office workers, as they are most susceptible to developing the voluntary overtime habit.

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We are often put in a situation where we need to negotiate with, or confront somebody in authority. For most of us, this is our employer, our direct manager, or even a CEO. Confrontation is already an unpleasant situation, and it is often made worse when the other person is in a position of authority over us.

In my time, I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing managers, and others for whom the term “manager” was simply a title for ego. The latter could certainly learn from the first. Unfortunately, we cannot change people very easily. We can only control what we know and equip ourselves with the confidence necessary to negotiate with and confront authority, whether the individual in question is good-natured, or an extravagant egotist.

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Imagine you woke up this morning and had no expectations of yourself. No standard you had to live up to. How would that feel? In my humble opinion, people demand so much of themselves that their confidence suffers. In a given day, we demand ourselves to look prettier, feel fitter, walk taller, talk with more charisma, work more productively, and even be funnier. Is it any wonder we doubt ourselves?

I have read many pieces of work in the past that focus on visualising, practising, self-hypnosis and many other techniques for dealing with confidence. I think these methods complicate what is really a societal issue: we can’t live up to our own expectations.

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The purpose of this article is to motivate those who are currently thinking about leaving their desk jobs for something else, but are clinging to one or more reasons why they should stay.

There are many perks to working in an office. You’re comfortable, there’s no need for labor intensive work and you have access to a kitchen. Perhaps you should consider all of the things you’ve given up for that comfy office job. This is a broad topic however, so this article will focus on the kind of feedback I have received from others when bringing up the subject of “why don’t you give up your office job, and do something else”.

Here are a few common responses I have encountered:

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