One Metric Worth Tracking

Ever found a parking ticket on your car windshield?

Whenever it happens to me, my first thought is usually ‘this is ridiculous!’ It feels like the exact opposite of a random act of kindness.

Sometimes I wish parked cars weren’t tracked so carefully.

But certain information I do want closely watched.

A few years back, my employer suffered a cyber attack that exposed lots of employee information. Because it was tracked, we knew to set up credit monitoring and protection against bigger losses.

Information tracking applies to how we as individuals think as well. All of us keep track of some things while ignoring others.

If you ask my friend Brian about the Golden State Warriors, he’ll tell you everything there is to know about them.

Annie can answer just about any question about homeschooling and youth education.

Christopher could give an impromptu talk about new windows on the market — that’s how well he knows them.

Each of these folks monitors certain information They’ve decided that there are particular areas important enough to know about, and they give the time and attention needed to do that.

What about you? What is important enough in your life that you keep track of it?

Year after year, polls show that US workers struggle to engage with their work. We do our work anyway, but doing something because we need to is so different from getting invested, getting our hands dirty, and releasing something powerful through our labor.

Let’s say that engaging with our work is an area we want to develop. Step by step, we want to walk toward working from our heart, which is what engaged work means.

How do we do that?

The Feeling of Connecting with a Task

When I was 11 or 12, as a proud member of Boy Scout troop 540 I remember being tested for my first aid merit badge.

Together with two other scouts, our counselor peppered us with questions: What’s the difference between heat stroke and heat exhaustion? What are the signs of hypothermia? Using sticks and a handkerchief, how would you set a broken arm?

While my fellow scouts seemed to know the answer to every question, I struggled. As the pattern continued, I started to feel ashamed. Not only was I failing in the counselor’s eyes, but my friends were seeing it all happen.

I was handed a study guide and told to know it inside and out by the next meeting. That week, for the first time, I really studied the material. Driven by the fear of semi-public failure, I spent hours memorizing details. When the next evaluation came, I was ready.

I got good at first aid because I ‘had to.’ And there’s something to be said for that. It shows how adaptable we can be, and how focused in the face of conflict.

Yet a skill gained for this reason can draw us into work we were never meant to do long-term.

The progression often goes like this: there’s an urgent need, and in response we do whatever we must to meet it. In doing so, we gain some knowledge and begin to create a reputation as the go-to person for that task or skill. Each time we say ‘yes’ to a request, that reputation gets stronger. If we simply follow along and accept each invitation as it comes, we may become ‘that guy’ — the person people go to for help in that area.

Nothing wrong with having a niche, so long as it’s work we enjoy and are good at. But skills gained under duress may not fit that description.

Working in an area we don’t really like, it’s unlikely we’ll ever become more than just competent enough. Would you want to hire someone who is just good enough, or can just meet the minimum standard?

Here we’re not talking about short-term problem fixing, but day-in, day-out work. For the sort of work we do regularly, we’ll want to find something more sustainable.

Energy In, Energy Out

We all have some experience doing something we really love.

Whether it happened recently or decades ago, whether it was at work or not, whether for a big project or small task, each of us has enjoyed some effort we’ve made toward some goal.

Maybe it was kicking a soccer ball against a wall, over and over.

Maybe we joined a choir, and found to our surprise that we loved it.

Perhaps we bought gifts for a friend’s birthday party and spent hours happily scanning deals and ideas.

Whatever it was, when we do something we love, there’s a big, bright, flashing neon sign that goes with it: energy.

Many tasks we do throughout our day drain us. Taking out the trash, doing the dishes, or anything else we don’t enjoy will lesson the amount of energy we have.

Activities we love have the opposite effect: rather than taking energy away, they give it to us.

This doesn’t mean we can go nonstop without limits. Rather, it explains how we can get swept up into some activity, how time can fly past without our noticing, and how doing something can enliven us.

When we do activities like this, we don’t think of time passing. Instead, we participate in an event with focus and pleasure.

Coming up with even one thing we do that feels this way can be a challenge. Especially if we’ve gotten used to shaping our work to what we think others want.

The further we are from the things we love, the more time it might take to remember and name them. Yet the effort is worth it because it will be like coming home. We can return, after a long journey, to ourselves.

A Sustainable Source

Maybe this proposal — that we figure out what those energy-giving activities are for us, and commit to building our work around them — doesn’t sound reasonable.

But I’d like to suggest that it’s more reasonable than trying to work well, year in and year out, doing work that depletes us.

Have you ever used one of those hand-crank flashlights? They don’t use batteries, but instead operate on energy gained from the user turning a crank. They’re mostly just for demonstrations, because keeping them lit up creates a tired arm pretty quickly!

Contrast that with energy gained from the sun and stored in batteries. It’s renewable — each day the sun comes back and pours out heat energy.

This is a picture of the difference between working outside and then inside our natural abilities.

When the situation calls for it, in special circumstances and for a limited time, we can get by using sheer force of will to do work that depletes and drains us.

But to set ourselves up for a career, the sustainable energy of our natural talents is the fuel we’ll need to be using. Anything less will run out!

Do you see someone well into their career, enjoying and engaged in their work? Chances are they are doing work that fits — that actually gives them energy.

This is what allows us to sustain our efforts.

Some of us have been fortunate to possess an unerring sense for calling into our work. We have never known the depletion that comes from working in ill-fitting areas for long.

But others of us have headed in a different direction. As we become convinced of the importance of working in energy-renewing ways, there are two steps for us to take.

Step one is to find out what those things are for us, and step two is to do them in an increasingly regular way.

To get started, consider keeping a notebook or phone or tablet close by, and making a note whenever you do something that is energizing. For now, that’s the only criterion we’ll want to be watching.

After doing this for some time, we’ll start to recover a sense for what these activities are that energize us.

At first, we may happen on these moments by accident. But as our grasp of them grows, we can start to look for ways to deliberately bring them into our regular activities and work. We can start to design our life around the work that brings us energy.

Over time this will have a positive effect on our work. We’ll develop marketable skills that we want to use. We’ll become increasingly valuable at work and capable.

If we keep it up, eventually we’ll discover that there’s a new center to our work. It’s the things we do using the skills we’ve been growing on purpose.

What is one skill or area that gives you energy? How could you bring this skill or area toward the center of the work you do?

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