Dirty dishes and a dream (or lack thereof)
How I’m attempting to build a career one dirty dish at a time
There are two types of people in this world: people who leave the pan to soak overnight, and people who roll up their sleeves and get that sh*t done now. I can’t speak to the first group, as there’s rarely been a pan in my kitchen sink the next morning, but I can say that if you’re like me you’re most likely a get sh*t doner. There’s no pan too big or too small⸺you put your head down, put in the elbow grease and crush the task at hand.
With that said, there appears to be a common misperception that get sh*t doners have it all together, but it’s important to note that there’s a distinct difference between getting sh*t done and having your sh*t together, especially when it comes to building a career.
Remember those friends in school that seemed to always know exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up? The role specific majors always come to mind. For example, there was an understanding that the nursing students were going to graduate, pass their exams, and become R.Ns. The teachers would teach. And the engineers would engineer. But outside of the role specific majors were the tens of thousands of students pursuing one of the dozens of other non-specialized degrees (i.e. business, marketing, economics, communications, etc.) that left the question of “what do I want to be when I grow up?” wide open.
I fell into the latter category. As a Sports Management major equipped with all of the skill sets necessary in order to succeed but no clearly defined path towards success, I’ve spent a lot of waking moments fixated on this. Because really, what does a successful career even look like when there’s so much unknown? I went from thinking I was going to be a “Jerry Maguire-esque” sports agent at 19, falling in love with advertising and copywriting at 20, wanting to be a high profile female GM at 21, and then graduating at 22 with the realization that I truly had no idea.
The good news is that I wasn’t alone in this thought — in fact, I wasn’t alone at all. Turns out most people my age don’t actually have a concrete vision or dream of what they want to achieve in life. One of these people is Tim Minchin, a wildly charismatic Aussie that delivered a poignant commencement address that highlighted the importance of having manageable, action-oriented goals in conjunction (or not) with larger life dreams. I first heard this speech in November of 2015 after one of my favorite college professors passed it along in an email. This was six months post-grad and around the time that I was starting to have those anxiety inducing “what am I doing with my life?” thoughts in my first real job. Fortunately, Tim’s words really resonated with me and although I found relevancy in all 9 of the life lessons he touched upon, the following struck a resounding chord with me that day and nearly every day on the job since:
“I never really had [a] dream and so I advocate passionate, dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you. You never know where you might end up.”
These words were everything I never knew I needed. As a highly driven, forwardly ambitious individual, I was constantly at odds with myself about the fact that I didn’t actually know what it was I wanted to do in my career and where I wanted to go. Did I want to go into marketing? I love storytelling, writing, and creating content. What about sales? I’m hyper-competitive and good with people. Administrative? I’m process oriented and more or less obsessed with dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s. The list goes on and on. Here I was at 22 with all of the ambition and drive I could muster, yet I was faced with the daunting reality that I had no idea what or where I was driving towards.
To combat this reality, I leaned into what I was good at — which for me was crushing the task at hand. I’ve had this relentless need to work hard at whatever it is that was in front of me my entire life — from constructing Lego sets and doing household chores as a child to hitting my daily/weekly/monthly numbers in my current role. I take pride in rolling up my sleeves and getting the job done, whatever it may be. I enjoy identifying underlying issues and faults in processes and working to solve them. By taking this approach and digging in to what’s right there in front of me, instead of what might come down the line, I’ve come to realize that I’m not so much driven by role, but more so driven by impact.
The young 22 year old that once lived in fear of the impending unknown has turned into the 25 year old that has learned to embrace it — with the understanding that working relentlessly in pursuit of short-term goals will naturally lead to the achievement of longer term career goals.
So in 10–15 years down the road when I’m getting interviewed by some magazine or podcast and the interviewer asks, “How would you describe your road to success?” I’m hoping my answer falls somewhere along these lines: I followed the dirty pan. The one(s) that no one wanted to touch and kept putting off until tomorrow. I rolled up my sleeves and solved the problems that others let soak. And in doing so I was led to one opportunity that soon turned into another and another and somewhere down the line I found success.
