Work Sucks, Then You Die: Finding Your “One Thing”
It’s Labor Day weekend, so I thought I’d take a minute to talk about working and job satisfaction since Inga covered that topic and several of you responded. I’m as unsentimental as you, but I’m feeling reflective because I had an extra day off this week and football isn’t on at the moment.
Now about jobs: I’m not convinced that humans are genetically programmed to have them. We need to accomplish, but not necessarily as a faceless cog in someone else’s big wheel. The Industrial Age put people on assembly lines and made their respective jobs unrewarding, interchangeable, and disconnected from the big picture. As I always say, if a job is obviously fun (like being a DJ, cruise director, or summer lifeguard) you can bet it doesn’t pay well -- it doesn’t have to.
Karl Marx was right -- those who own the means of production exploit the labor of those who don’t, even if they do it benevolently. You get rich by owning assets, not by cashing paychecks from those who do. As Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street, “I create nothing. I own.” So, if you get the chance and have the courage, be an owner.
Still, most of us are wage slaves, likely to spend our working career building someone else’s equity. You spend more time at work than with your family. You put your best energy and creativity into it. Maybe you’re recognized and appreciated, maybe not.
It’s like a psychology experiment with rats: do work, get paycheck, repeat. If you’re lucky, you have a great employer and a supportive boss and a clear-cut mission that you’re proud to tell strangers about even without drinking the corporate Kool-Aid first.
You don’t hear many inspirational deathbed quotes that lead off with, “I’ve always hated my job, but as I lie here waiting to feel the bony finger of the Grim Reaper, I’m sure glad I stuck it out in middle management instead of doing some other job that was fun and rewarding.” (nobody loves being in middle management, by the way, and rightfully so).
It’s surprising how many IT management folks strive for promotions and leadership jobs, only to wish they hadn’t. They commiserate behind closed doors about how they hate managing people and projects and would ten times rather be back working with databases or programming. Ego and money won’t let them step down or out.
Everybody has something they love to do and are good at. That may not be the shingle they’ve hung out, however. You’ve seen those stereotypical doctors who went to med school to get rich, but now hate dealing with patients. They’ll bend your ear endlessly about how they could have been a sharp businessperson, musician, or software developer. Then, they go back to probing prostates and expressing their life’s disappointments by refusing to use CPOE.
I’m going to share with you the most valuable advice I’ve learned about working for a living. It’s deceivingly simple, yet 90 percent of people don’t follow what it plainly says:
Every person has one thing they do extraordinarily well. You will never be happy in your job unless the majority of your time involves doing that one thing. And if you do that one thing, money and success will find you, probably when you least expect it.
Here’s how you know what that “one thing” is:
• When you do it, you get so absorbed that you lose track of time.
• You do it faster than anyone you know.
• You do it better than anyone you know.
• It’s effortless for you, but excruciatingly hard and frustrating for everyone else.
This may be the first article to cite both Karl Marx and Chuck Berry, but Chuck’s “Johnny B. Goode” describes the “one thing” hypothesis well:
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell
I’m not advocating that you quit your management job and take up motorcycle-building or Web design or guitar-playing. Actually, maybe I am. If that’s your “one thing”, you should be doing more of it before the clock runs out.
And with that, Happy Labor Day.
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