Joyful Burden

So, most people who have seen me set myself to a task say I have a good work ethic or that I'm a hard worker...or that I'm OCD. Even the last one is said with a good natured respect, though. My internal reaction is usually a 50/50 shot between a swell of pride that I try to quickly stiffle so that I don't get cocky and look like an ass and a jolt of shame that this poor person has been duped into thinking I'm doing a good job when there is so much I've missed or didn't get to. Sometimes I even have both together.

Over the long term, however, a third reaction has set in. I look around at the job in question, look at the person who is so impressed with my performance and try to figure out what he thinks is so special about what I'm doing. Now don't get me wrong, this is not a false modesty in some attempt to look humble or fish for compliments. I have truly wondered why what I consider to be, at best, an acceptable level of performance is considered by so many others to be exceptional, and I think I've figured it out. Rather, I've figured out why there are so few performing at the same level so that employers and supervisors find MY level of effort so remarkable.

Most people haven't learned how to enjoy work.

By that I don't mean they haven't found work they enjoy. I mean they haven't learned how to enjoy any given work they might be doing. This IS a lesson I've been taught and I thank my father for it. As with many lessons from our youth I did not appreciate it at the time, but now I'm glad my father gave me many chores to perform as a youth. Some were physically difficult. Some were tedious. Some were both. Few were required to be done only once.

One fine example is the trash barrels. My father used to get empty, used, 55-gallon drums to use for trash barrels. The lids to these were sealed making them very poor trash barrels in their initial state. What my father had me do to fix this state of affairs was take a hammer and chisel, beat the chisel through the edge of the lid, pull it back out, place it next to the newly created slit and repeat. I would painstakingly work my way around the edge of the lid until its contact with the barrel was completey severed and it fell through.

Once that barrel got rusted and weak from exposure to the elements it was deposited with its last load of trash at the dump and the process would begin again with a new barrel. Remember, this is just one of many chores. Now, rest assured I did not enjoy many of these tasks I was given while growing up. However, my father brooked no shirking, and if I was given a task it was a given that I must finish it, sooner rather than later. So, I would trudge out, tools in hand, often with many a great and dramatic sigh, to slave away for the awful ogre who ruled our house.

Yet, over the course of time performing many a given task, and over the course of years performing many tasks, a strange thing happened. I began to find that doing the task was less distasteful than having it hanging over my head. I also noticed that as I became used to some of my tasks I could fall into a familiar rhythm that made them seem almost effortless. Too, for those tasks that seemed especially tedious and difficult I was sometimes able to find a way to perform them more efficiently, or I might find it a challenge to just knuckle down and see how quickly I could power through to the end.

Along with the mere completion of a task the quality of the work was also important to my father. Quite often he seemed more upset at a poor quality product than at a task not yet started. Invariably I was required to repeat the task until he was satisfied. It quickly became my goal to avoid the negative feedback and garner the rare compliment, the old stick and carrot motivation. To this day I respond much better to the carrot, as long as it is sincere, than to the stick, though both will spur me.

The end result of all of this is...I enjoy work. I enjoy striving to please the person who gave me the task. I enjoy the challenge of finding the best way to accomplish a task. When possible I enjoy the familiar rhythm of a task at which I've become proficient or skilled. I enjoy pushing to see if I can do better this time than the last time I performed the task. Now, don't get me wrong, there are things I don't like to do. Also, there are times when I just don't feel like doing even those tasks I enjoy most. Yet, on the whole I like the act of being productive whether I am producing a tangible or providing a service.

And the nice thing is, even if I didn't gain anything else from it I would still have more fun at work than most people.