1st January 2016

Happy New Year: Resolving to be useful

– by Sabine Zetteler

I love a new year's resolution. Not the ones about dieting or getting yourself something new or doing 50 squats a day, but the ones that have some genuine worth. I know many people who think resolutions are daft or rendered pointless by their fragility, but I believe that there can be little better to do with that gloriously empty dawn of a brand new year than to take stock for a moment and think about your life, your work, your impact on the world, and to resolve to focus on the one or more elements of them that are ripe for enrichment.

Resolution cynics tend to be the ‘Never regret! Never look back!’ types who storm on single-mindedly through life, never letting their eyes off what’s immediately in front of them. Great if you can do that. I can’t; I do regret things. I’ve made decisions I’m embarrassed about. I’ve made the wrong call on several occasions. Not enough to send me into a state of paralysing self-doubt or anything, but enough to – every so often – stop me for a few seconds and encourage me to think about how I could be better. The time between Christmas and New Year provides an excellent window for resolutions to form – small but well-shaped promises to make me better at my job, a better daughter, friend, boss and citizen.

I don’t stick to all of them, of course – that’s not the point. For me, they’re ideals to aspire to, not rules to be kept or broken. You might fall short, feel momentarily disappointed in yourself, but that’s no reason to throw the whole thing out the window. You can’t be perfect, but you can be better.

Last year, the artist and printmaker (and, pleasingly, my boyfriend) Alex Booker made me a letterpress print of the title of one of my favourite William Morris books:

‘Useful work v. Useless Toil’

That is a neat and precise distillation of every resolution I’ve made this year. There is nothing as pointless as toiling for the sake of toiling or toiling while mistaking it for work. It is a terrible mistake to assume that all the work in the world in inherently good or meaningful just because it’s called ‘work’ and someone gets paid to do it. Earning money from what you do everyday does not automatically give it meaning or make it deserving of praise. Doing work for the greater good does. Doing work that helps does. Doing work that inspires you and the people you work for and with and for which there is a purpose does.

People often assume that the higher up the professional tree you climb, the more meaningful the work becomes, but the truth is that there is incredibly useful work to be done at every tier of a business and within society. Meaningful work is not the kind that necessarily gets you automatic respect from the man or woman on the street, and it may not be the kind of work you aspired to as a child, but if you know it’s contributing to something good, then it's good work. If something is cleaner, safer, better constructed, researched, developed or designed as a result of what you’re doing, then you're winning. If you love doing it, all the better. But anyone who is busting a gut for something that feels wrong, is exploitative or deceptive, or contributes nothing is merely toiling. And that makes the world a colder place.

Purposeless work erodes you. It’s bad for your heart in every sense. It is neither selfish to avoid it nor selfless to dedicate your time to working with meaning and benefit for others.

For example, I would rather stay late at the office cleaning up, packing boxes, writing notes and generally making it a pleasant and inspiring place for everyone to work in than make time for the 56th two-hour discussion at a brand HQ which achieves nothing but give everyone the false idea that they’ve done something. A good meeting, with a clear agenda and people who have energy, power and opinion enough to steer proceedings can be a great thing. But all too often, it’s just talking around a hole. There is so much to do at work, at home and in the community that it feels frustrating to fritter away time toiling on lifeless projects, and disingenuous to then charge someone when it doesn’t achieve very much. I’d rather be asleep – which, in its own way, qualifies as more-useful work.

So that’s my resolution for 2016 – to make all my time have a purpose. It might be for rest, for work, for inspiration, for health, for my circle of loved-ones or for the wider community, but whatever I do, I want to be able to say it was for something.

Let's get together and do something useful. Happy New Year – the Zetteler team and I wish you the very best for a toil-free 2016.