Don't Quit the Craft, Quit the Context

Do You Hate Your Job, Or Just Where You Do It?

Something quietly happens when you spend too long in the wrong environment, something you once genuinely enjoyed starts to feel like a burden. You wake up dreading Monday, you clock out feeling empty and eventually you convince yourself that you hate what you do.

But do you really hate what you do?

This is worth sitting with, because I think a lot of people get this wrong and it costs them.

Craft vs Context

There’s an important distinction that doesn’t get talked about enough and that’s the difference between the craft and the context. The craft being what you actually do and the context is where you do it, who you do it for, and the conditions surrounding it. The line between the two is often blurred and as a result context and craft blend into one, and can lead to you throwing away something you are actually good at and genuinely care about.

Most people who feel burnt out or resentful aren’t suffering from a craft problem, they are suffering from a context problem. However, because they don’t distinguish between the two, they end up resenting the craft because it becomes attached to the context.

Take the legal professional who spends their career defending clients they know are in the wrong, they will eventually start to feel worn and down and resentful as their moral compass clashes. They may grow to resent being a lawyer altogether, not because of the job itself but because of the context they are practising in. Those same skills of sharp thinking, persuasion and advocacy could serve a more meaningful purpose such as a charity, community organisation, or a firm whose values actually line up with theirs. As you can see the craft isn’t the problem, the lawyer is good at what he does and is passionate about it, the context is the issue.

I can relate to this personally as I enjoy finance and business, finding it genuinely interesting. The environment I work in, however, that’s a different story. Thankfully, I’ve managed to keep those two things separate in my mind, which has meant that I do not resent my craft despite resenting the context.

When Organisations Measure the Wrong Things

A huge part of the problem is the way corporations define and measure success, something that they often get wrong and I will explain using Boeing as an example.

When Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged back in 1997 there was a clash of cultures or context. Boeing had a more engineering driven culture focusing on being creative and ambitious, whilst prioritising building safe and reliable aircraft. On the other side Mcdonnell Douglas had a financial driven culture, following the Jack Welsh model of speed, cost cutting and strict targets. Mcdonnell Douglas culture took over, and engineers who had dedicated their careers to building safe, reliable aircraft found themselves working in a culture that rewarded speed and cost-cutting over quality and safety. The result was catastrophic and led to two major crashes of its Boeing 737 Max aircraft, which was a commercial disaster for the company and more importantly the cost of people’s lives. Over time many engineers left the context, but I have always wondered how many abandoned their craft and even grew to resent it?

On a less dramatic scale you could generate a million pounds of value for a company, and if you’re ten minutes late they’ll pull you into a meeting about your attendance. The performance indicators are completely backwards, busyness gets rewarded whilst contribution gets overlooked.

That kind of environment doesn’t just frustrate you over time, it corrupts your relationship with the work itself, and that’s a real loss.

The Trap to Avoid

This is where intentional living becomes relevant and essential.

Some people correctly identify that they’re unhappy and know that something has to change, in a rush to escape they misdiagnose the problem. They quit the craft and walk away from skills, experience and genuine passion for their craft, when in reality it was the context that was the problem.

Simply taking the time to reflect on what’s making you unhappy about your craft can reveal that it’s not the craft but the context. If you don’t like the office, the company or even the clients, that’s a context issue.

Before you make a big decision it’s worth asking yourself an honest question: if I did this exact work, but for a company I believed in, or entirely on my own terms, would I still hate it?

If the answer is no, you don’t have a career problem. You have a context problem, which is more solvable than what most people realise.

The Walls Aren’t Where You Think They Are

We assume we can’t work on a project from a café in Lisbon or a beach bar in Indonesia, when in reality a laptop and a decent wifi connection is often all that stands between where you are and where you want to be.

Technology has removed most of the genuine reasons office work had to exist in the way it did. What’s left is largely habit, assumption, and for some bizarre reason, nostalgia. Many roles, including traditional roles, can now be done remotely from a laptop, no office required along with the excess baggage that comes with it.

Repurpose, Don’t Discard

So what does this actually look like in practice?

You could find a remote role doing what you do now, either for a company whose values you can actually get behind, or you could become a solopreuner and start a lifestyle business. You could consult or go fractional, offering your expertise to smaller businesses and solopreneurs who need it but can’t afford a full-time hire.

That last option is something I’m actively working towards myself, repurposing my skills, knowledge and insights from a variety of careers and studies. Instead of staying in a corporate environment that doesn’t align with how I want to live, my goal is to take those skills and direct them towards helping others. My current work in finance can be turned into a fractional CFO role or even business consultancy, helping people build and maintain a lifestyle business. My time spent as a youth worker and ministerial work is being repackaged into life coaching.

Same craft but a completely different context.

Before You Walk Away

Intentional living is about designing a life around what you actually value, not reacting against circumstances and making decisions in frustration.

So before you discard something, ask whether you actually dislike the work, or whether the wrong environment has just made it feel that way.

The craft might still be worth keeping, it may just need a better home.