Every Job A Dream Job
My purpose is an ambitious one and I like it that way. I’ve sought two things in my career. First, to make every job my dream job and secondly to have a successful foray in business with my closest friends. I’ve accomplished just one of these goals thus far but I’m not folding my hand yet.
Over the years I have held several jobs and scores more consulting gigs. During this time I have shared the details of these activities with friends and colleagues and always found their responses interesting. Mostly when things were less than stellar.
Sure, I’ve dealt with difficult situations just as anyone else has during a similar career. It’s only natural. I’m approaching my twentieth year and I’ve been involved with a wide range of businesses. From the super successful to complete meltdowns, you’ll see just about all of it in twenty years. And when it gets tough you start hearing the surprise in people’s voices when you share the sordid details of a struggling business and the deterioration of morale. Before long, you’d swear you were cast in a William Golding novel.
Most people work a job. It’s a mandatory appearance to a location they’d rather not visit for eight hours. A vapid occupant of one’s time. In the end, a necessary exchange for currency. This mindset, however, yields strong feelings of displeasure towards the job.
It gets in the way a lot. A large expanse of your time is spent working and sleeping, leaving you a mere third of the day to spend as you choose, if you’re lucky. There’s still the list of equally desirable tasks such as watching your friends cat, picking up mom at the airport, or just running errands. Apparently people spend a great deal of time viewing it this way. I don’t and I never really have.
We all require money to live and, unless we are independently wealthy, have to do something about earning it. The requirement of cash drives people to land on a job that can provide it so long as its something the person can do, pays fairly, and infringes on their lifestyle the least. This is where we find currency.
Currency is not simply money. Currency is anything you find valuable enough to exchange your time, energy, or effort for. The personal sacrifice you make in exchange for something else is the pursuit of currency. There are many people whose sole currency is cash but then there are those who seek free time. And still even others who want to help others. Everyone has their own currency exchange rate and this factors into job seeking. If the desired currency rate isn’t obtained then the activity loses value. This can be if you have to work overtime and you’d rather be home playing your Xbox. It could also be a task that surprisingly takes longer to complete than anticipated but the paycheck doesn’t change.
There is a time component involved in every currency exchange, even the monetary ones. This is because time is the only valid currency there is. It’s universally valuable, precious, and most importantly, fleeting. You cannot be two places at the same time, which places temporary premiums on your exchange rate. Would you require more in exchange for your time if it were your daughter’s recital? Of course you would, even though the job doesn’t change that time slot is far more precious and therefore more valuable to exchange. This is, of course, if you were willing to trade it at all.
Understanding your currency exchange is vital to working your dream job. Recognizing what you value and prioritizing it will help you make the best choices to protect what’s most important to you. Then, and only then, can you begin to exchange what’s valuable to you for what’s valuable to others.
It’s also important to recognize your responsibilities and limitations. This helps you better accept when your currency exchange feels out of balance. Your dependence upon others transfers the balance between your wants and their desires. For instance, everyone has to earn enough to pay the bills and eat. If you’re unable to do this alone, you require the aid of someone else and can gain that through an exchange of work.
This means that most of us have some dependence upon others and therefore cannot control all of our time. Whatever amount of time is required for you to exchange your value for your sustenance is inescapable and it varies.
I recognized long ago that I was going to have to work for a living. I depended on others to sustain myself and therefore my currency exchange would not be completely in my control. Knowing this, I decided to make the best use of what I could and the primary component is always time.
I could view work as eight hours of going through the motions, blind and apathetic, until I heard the whistle blow and then reanimate again at quitting time. I could lament my work and dread going in every morning. I could do this but the time wouldn’t change. The work wouldn’t change. No matter what, because I need the money, I will find myself at the same desk every day doing the same stuff, unless I chose to be different.
Remember, this is my currency exchange. It’s about me. That time at work could be all theirs if I let them have it all. But I decided not to. I decided to reign in more balance to my exchange.
If I have to be at work every day for a set amount of time I may as well make the best of it. I should enjoy it… it is inevitable. Where to begin, though? I focused on me.
I chose to learn more about what we did as a company. What did my department contribute to and how did it really work? This quickly became a daily challenge — to find out more and more about the nuances, even if they seemed boring at first. The bigger picture would emerge and I’d know more about the department, then the company, then the industry as a whole. I chose to learn.
I also chose to collaborate. I see these people every day so I can groan to myself about the weird accounting lady or I could get to know her. So that’s what I did. I turned more of my time in the office into socialization and less about putting cogs on wheels. Both are good for the business but only one leads to growth, not the least of which provided an outlet. The more people I spoke to the more I was recognized. The more I could contribute and interact. Things could become fun.
Soon I didn’t view work as a tax any more. I began to look forward to sharing what I had learned with the people I had begun relationships with. This made every job much more tolerable… nay, enjoyable. But there was still one nasty aftertaste that was the Equal to my sweet tea: performance. I still had a boss and he still wanted to measure my results.
There’s always the urgency to perform. Monthly sales totals, production yields, cost savings, whatever. This was something I couldn’t control and therefore would remain as mechanical as the overseers would allow, and they obliged. Surely there was a way to apply my new exchange balance theory to productivity as well. There is.
It’s an amazing thing. When you start interacting with others, learning more about what you do, and enjoying your time at work you automatically become more productive. Not focusing on the numbers, oddly, actually increases the numbers! The clock punching, secondhand watching, and number crunching totally kills the humanity and therefore anyone’s currency exchange. When this happens we are ready to get the hell out of there when the bells ring and that’s it.
Simon Sinek, an amazing author and speaker, has posed a theory he calls the “Golden Circle” which describes how people communicate. Communication itself is a form of currency exchange. Someone shares a thought in exchange for someone’s time to hear it. The Golden Circle, then, does a good job of explaining the importance of identifying value and aligning this exchange.
There are three concentric circles, which are labeled: why, how, and what, all working their way outward. Sinek has observed that most everyone, businesses included, communicate from the outside in. The mechanical first and emotional last. Similar to how we perceive our jobs. Only when you flip this around and communicate from the inside out, exposing your vulnerabilities first, will the exchange improve and that’s the key to making every job your dream job.
Starting with why instead of what allows you to tell or show others what you stand for. Why you work. Why you wake up in the morning. Why you exist. It’s your identity. Starting off with what you stand for aligns you with like-minded people and businesses. The why is always your personal desire or goal. This may not seem immediately recognizable. Even if you define your why as, “to help children learn and prepare for the future”, this is still a sought after goal. A desire. Desires are by definition goals yet to be achieved. These goals may not be achieved which leaves you vulnerably in pursuit, but honest. There’s no pretense in exposing your vulnerabilities.
This is what tips the scale between a unilateral ask (mechanical) and a real relationship (emotional). Everyone has desires that have not yet been realized and we are all fearful of not reaching them. Everyone can relate. Only when we relate do we live, anything else is simply existing. This is why work, for most, is burdensome. It doesn’t have to be.
Changing my mental approach to the inescapable work, reigning in control over my currency exchange by learning and interacting, and establishing vulnerability by sharing my desires first has turned all of my work into my dream job. Whatever I do, for whomever, or wherever — it is my dream job because I do my best to adhere to this approach in all that I do.
Originally published at rynfrz.com on April 7, 2014.
