One of the biggest challenges I face with advancing my career is the fact that I gave a lot more effort to my early menial jobs than was ever necessary. If you try as hard as you possibly can to be the best damn burger-flipper around, you're still only makin' six bucks an hour. When I was a teenager, I may have delivered those flyers ten times better than the other kid on the block, but we still made the same number of pennies per page. Plus, all my early jobs lasted quite while, too--often in excess of 1 year, which is a lot for someone just breaking into the work force. I was tricked into believing that giving more effort than my employees was actually valuable.
I was fooled by all of my role models into believing that if you stay at a job for a long time, the longevity and loyalty will look good on your resumé for future employers--only to ultimately grow up in a world where employment is so transient that job "diversity" is sought over the more traditional values. Eventually, it became clear that the people who told me to have a good work ethic and strong seniority in trivial work weren't the same people who were writing the cheques. It took longer than I would've liked to figure that out and although I obviously need the money to live, all I seem to have gotten out of my jobs otherwise are the friends that I make there--but even those seem to disappear in transition, no matter how valuable they seemed at the time.
So now, I have a "real job". I guess. Maybe I've had a few "real" jobs, by now and my work ethic has never really changed in spite of how little I've gained from over-exerting myself. I'm tired of it, but it's ingrained into who I am and I really have a hard time giving the bare minimum. I build spreadsheets with pretty pictures and pretty colours that take twice as long as equally-functional bare bones spreadsheets--but I can't make them that simple because I'm just fundamentally programmed to create things the way I think they should be created. I think it's because I happened to believe that colours and pictures and all that decorative formatting jazz are legitimately important to running an administrative office. Soon enough, I may have enough information to prove that--but that's neither here nor there. What's on the plate right now is my own exhaustion with operating this way. How long do I continue giving too much effort without getting anything back before I realize that it's fruitless? Hell, I already know it's fruitless! Snap out of it, Self!
Of course, it's not that easy because in addition to learning what you don't get for your troubles, I've also learned a lot of other things and it's an irrational and insatiable fear that keeps me doing what I do. Throughout all of this "work force" business there is one thing I'm sure has nothing to do with your effort (or even your tangible contribution), and that is your chances of getting fired. I worked pretty damn hard at all of my jobs, subconsciously trying to make an impression in the world, and when I first got fired, I was mortified. It was like...the first thing in my life that didn't make sense--it didn't even compute. I had come to terms with the other mistakes that I'd made and blamed the wrong people for--I thought them out, came to a rational conclusion, saw the other person's point of view, took the lesson and moved on. But when I got fired, it was a clash of ideas and behaviours that I didn't know existed in the world at the time. Kinda like being told there's no Santa Claus for the first time when you're old enough to know it's true, but way too young to be happy about it.
Since then, I've been fired from more jobs than I care to count and for more reasons than I care to think about anymore. Some of my notices of dismissal had some truth in them, some made offensive bold-faced lies about me, some were deadpan thirty-second phone calls and some were issued by my own co-workers instead of the cowardly management. But ALL of them were different and NONE of them mentioned anything about what I gave while I worked there and what positive influence I had had. I mean sure, you don't expect a glowing review when you're being fired, but I was in A Helping Hand Staffing Services about a year ago and to this day, they still use one of the crappiest old spreadsheets I ever made for their scheduling when I worked there for six weeks in 2004. They STILL haven't done any thing to recognize the difference between punching the clock and the actual impact of the hours their employees work, and that shows a glaring lack of knowledge and confidence on the subject of your own business.
But what do you do as an employee? This plague exists in almost all businesses and only gets more contagious the larger a company grows. That's why the world is so screwed up and we have public industry that loses money by being affordable, extremely clean and well-maintained, while simultaneously a private industry offers the same service with better features and enhancements that cost more and are filthy. Somebody's making money, and it's not me. I'm too busy running around the bottom of the barrel of job stability at full speed trying to figure out how NOT to get fired, how could I possibly start thinking about how to better my career? In a sensible world, the things you do to get hired, avoid getting fired and better your career are all exactly the same and I think it's a bloody shame that our overtly convoluted society has made people forget that.
My aspirations have never been that high and the more I learn, the less enthusiastic I am about being successful. The more you know, the less it matters--sometimes to the point of feeling bad for others who give so much of themselves for so little gain. So my life isn't really about making a revolutionary and noticeable impact on the world at large because I don't think that's possible without a tremendous amount of luck. Malcom Gladwell wrote a book called "Outliers" recently that does an interesting exploration of worldly successful celebrities and public figures, focusing expressly on how the events leading up to their success can largely be attributed to good luck. Obviously, you have to want to succeed and there is a certain level of hard work involved, but Gladwell was trying to express that just because someone is successful, doesn't mean that they possess the formula for becoming so. For every high achiever who speaks strongly about the hard work, determination and perseverance that got them where there are today, there are a hundred other people who worked just as hard and got nowhere. There are way too many variables in life that are completely out of your control to justify walking around as though you can just will yourself to live the life that you choose. "Believe in yourself and you can achieve anything"--with a little luck. Without luck, though, it's just a gamble and you're trading your hardest efforts every day for something intangible and uncertain. It's naive and it works for some people--I won't hold it against you, but my case for it being a waste is empirically stronger than your case for boundless self-empowerment.
So I'm just gonna let this play itself out naturally. I can't re-create my entire work ethic overnight, but I think it's improving--and when I say "improving," I mean "conforming to the best possible fit for my own selfish needs without jeopardizing the outfit I work for and the role I play within it." I mean, I still have no idea what it takes to avoid getting fired but I don't think there's a formula for that. My work ethic is kind of a sub-conscious entity that behaves independently of my actual brain and doesn't evolve at the same pace. As I learn things, my conscious self feeds all that information slowly into my instincts and behaviours, so recognizing a needlessly strong work ethic is a good first step towards finding a way to do less than 12 hours worth of work in an 8 hour day for no reason.
The same thing happened over the last year or so where I went through a period of ridiculous self-loathing and took my own trivial failures so harshly that I'd hardly be able to function. My brain recognized the problem well before my instinct did and even as I stood there in a confused panic recklessly destroying things in my room just to let off some steam, my conscious self kept whispering the voice of reason in my ear. Louder and louder until eventually it drowned out the sounds of my panic. Now I'm fine--and that sounds pretty easy, but it took a long time and even though something like that doesn't totally disappear from your psyche overnight, I am now consciously aware of the way I was and the ways that I am better today. Back then, I was consciously aware of the way I was, I knew that it was wrong and I knew that I wasn't better yet--remember, don't overcomplicate your happiness. If you feel better, you're basically...well, better.
It's trait-based natural selection. Those features about you that serve you best in your own social environment will flourish over time and anything that has a negative impact will eventually fade from your character if you allow yourself the opportunity to change. The challenge is not in trying to become a different or better person, because who we are is defined by the people and settings we surround ourselves with. The buffet of life offers many different dishes for many different tastes and you can learn to love any one of them--the real challenge is not in selecting from the menu, but deciding where in the restaurant you want to sit.
