I read the Main Street Journal every morning. It has all of the local news that is not the “if it bleeds, it leads” kind of stories. Down at the bottom, it has posts by local blogs, such as this one whenever I talk about the Memphis area. Well, this morning I saw this post and I thought I would add my 2 cents.
Mr. Davis relates the conversation with a former student who, fresh out of college, wants to make her mark in the world, but is stuck stuffing envelopes. Mr. Davis does a fantastic job, describing why she must stuff envelopes before she can do anything else. He says,
A full 93% of my job is the stuff I cannot stand (and most likely any executive level art administrator’s job, for that matter), but I do all the stuff I dislike for the chance to engage in the thing I love to do the other 7% of the time. If we manage the 93% well, with luck the 7% will be enough to sustain us, the 7% will result in something compelling and inspiring that we can feed our need for wonder and meaning with, the 7% will keep us from burning out and drive us ever onward to do more.
The 7% is why we do what we do.
In order to understand where we are now, we must understand where we have been. Each job, each position, each career is hopefully a step up on that ladder of success, getting to that point we want to attain. The bad news is, many people grumble so much about climbing the ladder, that by the time they get to the top, they realize they got on the wrong ladder. All that hard work and they didn’t get to go where they wanted to go.
This is my story.
At 16, my first job was at K-Mart. I didn’t start as a stock boy, I started as a salesman in the electronics department. That job lasted a whole 3 months. I was fired because I didn’t pay attention to the sale sign (this was W-A-Y before barcodes) and accidently sold a $199 TV for $119. I filled the rest of my teen working life in a Wendy’s and a Noble Romans.
A month after I tuned 18, I was off to the Navy. I was full of piss and vinegar. My entire first enlistment I had average-to-good evaluations, with the exception of attitude. That I always had a poor rating on. It wasn’t until I left the Navy and rejoined that I finally got my head screwed on straight. I was 25 then. My evaluations improved, and I left as an excellent performer.
In 1992, my civilian IT career started. I jumped from job to job, never staying at one job for more than a year, with the exception of one job. That was the one where the boss never saw me, I was in Memphis and he was in Washington state. I was laid off of that job. That was the first time that had ever happened to me. My last IT career job, I had reached the top of the ladder. I was the IT manager of a company that was doing over $100 million a year in sales of office products. It wasn’t the right job for me. My subbordinate talked behind my back with my superior and others, there was a “deus ex machina” mindset in the subbordinate and the marketing manager, who used to also have the IT department. I don’t like office politics and gossip. I quit that job, heading for disaster.
My mental state at that time was confusion. I went to see a psychiatrist who said I was suffering from “Adult ADD” and put me on medication. Well, if you want to read about what happend from that point on, just read the archives of my blog.
The point I am trying to make is that my mental illness caused me to switch ladders. I am now leaning up against a different roof. The longer I stay in this career, the more I realize how much I am needed. Before, I was just a drone in the IT career. Now, I help people. I reach out to those who have a mental illness and I say, “I understand. I have been in the same place as you. I know you can beat it.” 10 years of being on disability helped me and my family survive while I went back to stuffing envelopes again, this time in the mental health field. I am now making, dollar wise, the same amount that I made in my last IT career job. I have been in this job for over two years now, and neither I nor the job shows any signs of slowing down.
I also, for the first time in any of my jobs, during last years performance evaluation, received a “superior performance.” I am very proud of that, and I have done my best in doing better this year than last year. My evaluation for last year is coming soon, and I hope to get another superior rating. I love my job. I help people, and there is no office politics. No gossip, no back stabbing to get ahead. What more could you ask for? Sure, I push a lot of paper. That only tells me where the people need help. But that paper pushing is part of that 93%. The 7% comes when I get a member on the phone and they say, “Thank you for calling. It’s nice to know someone understands what I have been through and I can relate to.”
Let me close by reiterating what Mr. Wheeden said. You have to perform the small, insignificant and boring things first. You have to do them under time, under budget and over the top in quality before you can be trusted to do the big important things. For some people, the big important things never come, because they never performed the mundane things well. So, they will always be stuck doing those things until they get the drive to show that they can handle the big, important things. If you do every project like a big, important thing, pretty soon you will be given the big important things to do.
Good luck.
