What is your labor?

On this Labor Day in the United States, I’m curious.

What is your labor? I don’t mean “what work do you do,” but instead “what feels like labor to you?” Another way to think about this is: what work do you do that you need respite from?

This question is coming up for me because of how often I am hearing people–friends, family, clients, colleagues–say that they are weary. Something in their work is draining, is unfulfilling, is sapping their energy.

As you look at your workday, can you identify the tasks, projects, and even people who feel like labor to you? What can you do to mitigate that sense of work? It’s not always possible to outsource or delegate the laborious tasks, but we can be intentional about how we think about them, and how much mental space we allow them to have.