Are you willing to share your work?

Wundayatta I am not sure I understand what you mean by sharing. Do you mean sharing the work itself? or sharing the credit? Or sharing in another way?

I share, delegate, enlist others at work everyday.
Work is just that. There is enough to go around and it needs to be done in a team environment. (at least some of it).
For me it has always been a way to show my worth by sharing it. It shows the level I put into it. What another does with it, is their business unless it impacts the company or group.
I take pride in what I do and never feel threatened because I know the effort and level of work that was done. It also helps mentor and foster good work habits of others.
I have had the opposite experience if my leads, supervisors, managers feel I am trying to take their job.
People that work in a bubble like that only hurt the group, company, relationship or themselves. I can’t control what they do, but I can focus on doing a better job and getting out of their way.

I give my work away free and anonymously everyday online, and I work cooperatively in person everyday. I almost cannot help but share my work. Philosophers who work in isolation often wind up taking things like solipsism too seriously, whereas truth springs from argument among friends.

Say it’s your job to mow the lawn. Someone else comes along and offers to take the job. Are you happy, or does it bother you?

Let’s say you are the manager of a division, and someone comes along and offers to do your job for you, half time or full time; whatever. Is this a good thing?

Are there any jobs you would not want to give up because if you did, you would feel like you were useless or had no purpose. Like mother. Or musician.

Are there any jobs that most people would probably want to get rid of, that if you had to get rid of it, you would feel you were losing your place in the family or the community?

Like my job in my family is to be the cook. My wife is unemployed and wants to take some of the cooking away from me. Part of me is ok with it, but part of me is worried that she’ll take this, and then she’ll take that, and before I know it, I won’t have any purpose in the family any more. So I am reluctant to teach her how to cook.

Nope. To me that borders on controlling. In the personal case you mentioned, she just wants to take some of the burden off you and do something to help in life’s current situation.

Love is taking a few steps backward (maybe even more)...to give way to the happiness of the person you love.
~pooh

Aha! I get it better now. Thanks for explaining Wundayatta
At work it depends who is offering to “help out” by taking on some of my load. First of all, that doesn’t happen too often where I work, lol. But when it does I try to deduce if they are truly trying to help out of the goodness of their heart or if there is some hidden agenda. For example, one of my co-workers thinks she should be my boss but I will fight that all the way to hell and back. If she offers to teach me something or help me out I am resistant because I sense she will use it to show management that I they will be “better served” and I will be more productive if I am under her command. This is not pure paranoia on my part much as it may sound like it. She tries to insert herself in many situations where I am perfectly capable of handling things on my own. I feel that she will invert the situation from one of just equals giving each other a hand to one of mentoring me.

There are what used to be known as “plum projects”. When I get one of these, I don’t mind collaborating on it and brainstorming it with others. I know that will make the work much better. But I also want to get fair credit for my input. After all, I am working for money, I am not above it all and independently wealthy so I do care about getting my fair share of the credit as I feel my paycheck is based on my performance.

Sharing the results of my work is what I really love to do! I want someone to get enjoyment out of what I have designed. I want it to bring a smile to their face! And that is very tied up with my identity.

At home, it depends. My husband and I don’t usually work together on things, we divide and conquer. Very little conflict there. If he started wanting to cook as your wife is doing now I think maybe I would try cooking together. It could be a way of fostering closeness. I have often felt that cooking would be more fun with a partner helping out. When we were first married sometimes he would help me chop vegetables and do some of the prep work. Now he just lets me do it all and he is responsible for cleaning up the resulting detritus and wreckage afterwards. (tonight it was substantial, lol)

Interesting. Specific to your example, I love cooking and consider it part of my identity in a lot of ways, but sometimes I wish my boyfriend helped more with it. I love for that to be time spent together, and to feel like a team effort. I like to just hang out in the kitchen, working together and drinking wine and talking about things.

At work-work, though, I get very territorial. I have had a hard time delegating out things that could have easily been delegated. I am going to do this for the first time in the next few weeks and I’ve lost any apprehension I had about it, maybe because I don’t care very much about the project anymore.

If by sharing my work with someone I would lose part of my pay, no, I would not do it. I work to live, I don’t live to work. Consequently, I need my pay packet to sustain the way I live my life and to provide for my family.

Other than that, it would depend on the part of my job they want to share. If it is the routine, mundane stuff, go for it. If it is the stuff I really like or that will affect my ability to gain promotion, no, I wouldn’t like that so much.

In the house, I am happy to share any chores. No ownership over that stuff.

I can get fairly feisty if someone offers me help on something that I’m actually having difficulty doing. It is as if I can’t admit that I can’t do it and have to prove that I can do it. So, when I was trying to get the one hundred pound desk up the stairs and my friend asked if I needed help, I bit his head off. But later I was happy that that same friend took the box and the wrappings out to the trash.

Are you willing to share your work? Yes, if another deserves it.
Does sharing your work threaten your identity? No, it becomes part of their identity as well.
Does sharing only certain kinds of work threaten your identity? Not at all, my work doesn’t necessarily define me, perhaps my deeds, but not my work.

Like, if it’s work you think is unappreciated or that no one notices, is it ok to share that? I would never say my work should be appreciated, I would have to be real with myself and others around you will let you know if it’s good work or not.
What about doing laundry or cooking or cleaning around the house? I’m a male, I love cleaning. It doesn’t make me less or more of a “man”.
Are you happy to share that? I don’t mind at all, my masculinity is measured by the nobleness and inspiration I leave upon the world. Of course, a female is capable of this as well.
Or would that threaten your place in the world? Nope.
Do you know people who would never give up this kind of work? Luckily no, but people who are suggestive in doing a certain work can do that, I believe.
A mother or grandmother, perhaps? Nope. My mother works two jobs, legally.

And if you have high status work, would you ever be willing to share that? Of course, but I’m guessing by this point the responsibilities are quite up there.
Share the wealth? Yes.
Or would that be threatening to your place in the world, too? Not at all. Money is only needed to buy food, everything else is perception, abstract and subjective in my opinion, for instance, luxurious cars may be nice to someone, but for me, a vintage guitar is nice to me.

Sure—which part of it do you want to do?

I don’t think anyone can do my job as a patient navigator as good as I can so I tend to keep most of my work responsibilities to myself instead of having others help me. As far as chores at home, I don’t mind sharing.

Where I work the management has cut our working hours. So several of us full time workers have agreed to give some our work hours to the part time workers so that no one suffers too much. What I do is take one paid vacation day every two weeks. I’m good with that. Anyway this February work hours will increase considerably when our new emergency department open up.

I was self employed for the first 16 years out of college so there was no one around to pat me on the back. Took a job at an epoxy manufacturing company and the boss never told me what to do….now I own it. The only way I get recognition is when all the checks I write clear.

In light of @wundayatta‘s clarification, I would say that there is no single job I have that I would be unwilling to share or give away. None of them define me on their own. That said, I would not give up all of my jobs. I might be willing to share them all, but I couldn’t be idle. At least not yet.