Are You In A Bad Relationship With Your Job?

Have you ever dated somebody that was difficult to date? 

 

I haven't dated anyone in quite a while (my wife will be happy to hear this news), but I remember a few dating situations from my single days that were more difficult than they needed to be. And lasted much longer than they should have.

 

Maybe you're familiar with the scenario. Things started out just fine, exciting even. When the relationship is new, even the other person's quirks are kind of cute. Before long, though, those quirks start to irritate you a little. And about two seconds after that, they irritate you a lot. Like food stuck in your teeth. Sure, you could leave it there for awhile, but everything inside of you wants to dislodge that food and return your dental state back to normal.

 

So you dig at it with your tongue. If that doesn't work, you'll desperately search for a toothpick. And since you don't typically carry short, sharpened sticks of wood with you, you begin improvising substitutes: the corner of a piece of paper, a flattened straw, or even the tip of a steak knife. C'mon, you know you've done it. 

 

The difference between having popcorn stuck in your teeth and being in a bad relationship is that -- for some unknown reason -- you will put up with a bad relationship a whole lot longer. It's likely because you hope the relationship will improve, whereas you're pretty sure that popcorn is going to ruin your life if you don't surgically remove it in the next five minutes.

 

What popcorn stuck in your teeth and a bad relationship have in common is that they both negatively affect your ability to be a productive, positive member of society until you separate yourself from them.

 

I know a whole bunch of people who have a bad relationship with their job, don't you? They go to work in a place they don't really like, doing work they don't really engage with, with people they'd rather not hang around with.

 

Some of these people don't get along with their boss. Some don't like the work they do. Some don't like the "moral compass" of the company they work for. Some don't get the support, resources, equipment, budgets, etc. they need to truly be effective. Some simply aren't competent or skilled enough to do the work that's required of them.

 

And almost all of them hope the relationship will change for the better. Some are working to improve the relationship. Heck, some of them are even in counseling. 

 

But what they really need to do is dislodge the popcorn. They need to remove themselves from the relationship. Do I have to spell it out for you, or are the metaphors working here?

 

Maybe you need to quit your job.

 

Yeah, I went there.

 

All relationships have rough patches. There is no absolutely perfect job. I'm NOT saying to throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble. But if things have been going bad for a while, have a heart-to-heart conversation with your gut. Your gut never lies to you. If your gut is telling you this is a bad relationship, you might want to listen to it. Your gut is wise. Wise like Yoda. If it makes noise, it might even sound a little like Yoda. Mine does and it kinda freaks me out sometimes.

 

I've been fired three times in my life. All three of these relationships were over long before my bosses pulled the trigger. All three instances I trudged to work every day thinking "One of these days I'm either going to quit or they're going to fire me." Wow, did I waste a lot of time (both theirs and mine) at those jobs. Should have listened to my Yoda gut sooner.

 

You can even be in a bad relationship with a good job. I know people who work for great companies with decent bosses, yet it's just the wrong place for them for some reason. This may be the most dangerous situation of all. These types of jobs become silent, slow killers because they're "not so bad." Red flags include thoughts or statements like:

 

"Well, we have really good benefits." 

"But I really like the people I work with."

"At least everyone pretty much leaves me alone."

 

Or the deadliest excuse of all:

"I make great money." 

 

The problem with these kinds of jobs is that you wake up twenty years later and realize it was just ok (at best) and you could have done something much more engaging, more enjoyable, more productive, more exciting, more passion-filled, more YOU.

 

Believe it or not, I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing it on behalf of everyone who works with you. If you're in a bad relationship with your job, and you really should get out of it, you're negatively and unfairly affecting everyone else around you.

 

I evaluate all employees on three basic questions that determine the health and status of the relationship they have with their job:

Do they really "get" the job? (Do they really understand what it's about?)
Do they really want to do the job?

Are they capable of doing the job well?

If the answer is not "yes" on all three, they may not be the best fit. I got this directly from the work of Gino Wickman who developed the EOS (Entrepreneurs Operating System) way of approaching business. If we would all ask ourselves these questions, we'd find out pretty quickly if we should stay in the relationship or not.

 

So, if your Yoda gut has been acting up lately, ask yourself:

Do I really "get" this job?
Do I really want this job?
Am I capable of doing this job well?

Maybe we should ask these questions in our dating relationships, too! We'd probably drop the duds a lot faster and find our soul mates sooner. By the way, I can honestly answer yes to all three questions in my marriage (my wife will be happy to hear this news, too).

 

Thanks for reading! See you next week.

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Do One Thing Well

Once in awhile, I run across something that is almost word for word what is on my my mind at the moment. I had this idea in my head about the power of focus and I was going to write this very short, but powerful post on how focusing is the most powerful thing you can do, yada yada yada. Then I read Leo Babauta's post on Zen Habits last week and he said it so well I couldn't even try to put it into my own words. One really amazing thing about Leo is that all of his writing is free of copyright. He gives you full permission to take any of it or all of it. He doesn't even ask for credit. He's giving away his product, and making a good living at it. That's a whole different article idea I might just have to write (unless Leo beats me to it again). For this week, though, listen to Leo.

Do One Thing Well 

by Leo Babauta, author of the wildly successful blog, Zen Habits

I’m often asked how you can start doing work you love — how you can make a living doing something you’re passionate about.

I don’t profess to have all the answers, but the answer for me has been fairly simple:

Do one thing really well.

People want a more comprehensive answer than that, but in my experience, if you learn to do this, the rest will follow.

I write about simplicity. That’s all I do. Over the last 4 1/2 years of writing Zen Habits I’ve found success by focusing on that alone, and stripping away everything else that gets in the way. I’ve removed comments, I don’t do much social media (except for fun), I don’t do much email, I don’t sell ads, I don’t do consulting. I write about simplicity.

By doing this one thing over and over, I’ve gotten much better at it. Good enough, anyway, for people to want to read my work, and as the audience for my work has grown, so have the opportunities to make a living in a non-spammy way. The ways I monetize (print books, ebooks, online courses) are less important than how I’ve grown the audience.

Do one thing well.

It’s really that simple. Narrow down what you do, and do it repeatedly. Learn, grow, improve, read, watch, do it some more. When you’re really good at that one thing, people will want to pay you for it, or to learn how you do it.

It takes a lot of focus and practice to get good at doing one thing, but I’ve found that if you truly love it, it’s not really work. It’s play. And I never complain about playing at something I love.

Champions Vs. Cavemen

Let's face it: committees may be the single worst invention in the history of the world.

If you're wondering where the idea of a committee came from, it no doubt started with cavemen. The first group of pre-modern men were peeking out of the cave saying "You go first" "No, YOU go first." "No, YOU go first." This exchange lasted a full two hours, at the end of which absolutely NOTHING had changed. The group of hairy men with clubs still sat at the cave entrance, arguing about who would step up and brave the jungle filled with saber-tooth tigers, T-Rex's, poisonous frogs and only God knows what else. (Don't bother looking up the timeline, I'm reasonably sure these animals didn't exist at the same time. That's not the point.).

You know what happened next, right? Yep, a hairy caveWOMAN got tired of watching the first "committee meeting", grabbed a club from the nearest committee member and said "PLEASE! Move out of the way. I'LL go." Only it probably sounded more like angry grunts with a bit of a growl thrown in for effect, but the committee members understood just fine, I guarantee you.

And the first champion was born.

When the champion cavewoman returned in less than an hour with some fresh stegosaurus steaks, the caveman committee members wondered in awe just how she had accomplished such a great feat in such little time. Some were even a bit jealous and spiteful. One even said, "Stegosaurus steaks? Really? That's it?", seemingly forgetting that he had produced exactly NOTHING in the same amount of time.

Fast forward a few millennia. Doesn't look a whole lot different today, does it? Committees are formed to solve problems, yet they become perhaps the biggest problem of all.

I believe committees are formed, ironically, because no one person wants to commit to getting something done. So we hide in committees, hoping others will share -- or completely shoulder -- the majority of the burden. There's nothing committal about committees, except that they seem committed to having a lot of worthless meetings.

We get calls from clients every week inquiring about our workshops and programs. We work hard to find out their needs, and we propose our most brilliant ideas to them. If they then utter the words, "Ok, let me take this to my committee and share it with them," we might as well close the file on that program immediately. We know from past experience that if a creative idea gets sucked into the black hole known as a committee meeting, it is likely to never, ever make it out alive.

Committees play it safe. They order the chicken instead of the sushi. They water everything down to please the masses instead of creating something fresh, new, and interesting.

Oh, and they take FOREVER to do it.

Enter the champion. A champion doesn't wait. A champion doesn't always play it safe. A champion is more concerned with breathing life into an idea than debating whether the idea will be offensive to Dorothy in HR or Phil in Accounting.

Champions don't ask "Can we do this?" They ask, "HOW can I get this done?" Then they act. 

I'm not saying Champions act alone; actually, quite the opposite. They're usually powerful collaborators. They tend to find people that can effectively advance their cause and ask, "Here's what I'm trying to get done. Wanna help?" I don't know about you, but I rarely turn down a true Champion.

Another common characteristic of Champions is that they don't spend a lot of time in meetings. And if they do, they're the ones pushing the meeting toward action...instead of toward another meeting.

Seth Godin calls a Champion a Linchpin. If you want more inspiration and encouragement to be a Champion, you should definitely read his book. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Champions like to read books.

The next time you're tempted to form a committee, ask yourself why. Are you doing it to have more brains attacking an issue? Fine, have a brainstorming session, but don't call it a committee. 

And by all means, do not, I repeat, do NOT put decision-making power in the hands of a committee. When a committee is responsible, that means nobody is. You can't hold a committee accountable. You can only hold people accountable. Know who doesn't mind being held accountable? Yes, young padawan, you are correct: Champions! Champions love accountability. They embrace it. They crave it. They seek it out. Because people who get things done don't worry about being held accountable. They focus on getting things done.

I think I just heard somebody shout, "Amen, brother!" Or maybe it was tens of thousands saying it in unison.

I say NO MORE CAVEMEN! When you want to make true progress, don't form a committee, find a Champion.

Better yet, be one.

Do What You Hate

I'm about to contradict everything you've heard in the past decade about how to really get the results you want out of yourself, your team, your company, and your world.

You've been programmed over and over to "do what you love" and every day will be filled with rainbows and unicorns.

Marcus Buckingham taught us to work in our strengths and move away from our weaknesses in his mega successful book, Now, Discover Your Strengths. He's a good-looking guy with a cool accent, so we bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Tom Rath added to the strength mythology withStrengthsfinder 2.0. He's not quite as good looking as Marcus Buckingham and he doesn't have a cool accent, but that hasn't stopped anyone from buying into his philosophy, too.

Doing what you love & working in your strengths is a phenomenal idea. Utopia, right? I believe in the idea 100%. I'm trying to work more and more in my strengths every day. I believe in doing work you're good at and work that you love.

But, and this is a BIG BUT: Sometimes you've gotta do what you hate to get the results you want.

My flowerbeds taught me this. 

I hate weeding flowerbeds, so it becomes the last thing I do to the outside of my house each spring/summer. The problem is, I love spending time outside on my patio. And when the flowerbeds are full of weeds I can't enjoy my time outside because they really start to bug me. I can't even walk from the driveway to the front door without grunting "Ugghhhh!" (you know, that sound you make when you're disgusted with something but you don't have time to do anything about it at the moment).

I hate weeding flowerbeds, did I mention that?

I joke with my wife that weeding flowerbeds is "women's work", secretly hoping she'll believe me and start pulling those suckers up. Her response every year is as predictable as the weeds themselves. She lets me know who's boss with a single, emphatic, almost-maniacal, "HA!" And then jumps in her car and drives to Target.

Some people love to get on their hands and knees, pull weeds, plant flowers, prune bushes, and spread mulch. For some sick reason that's fun to them. Not me. But, dang it, those weeds will ruin my summer if I don't do something about it.

So I do what I hate. I spend a few hours pulling. I do get a tiny bit of satisfaction pretending the weeds are screaming "Nooooooooo!" as I rip them out of the ground. But it really isn't even enough satisfaction to power a smile.

If you've ever weeded a messy flowerbed, you understand the difference is night and day. It's transformative, even before you plant the pretty flowers you'll inevitably kill because you don't water them. It looks so much better. And you feel better. And the birds swirl around you singing a happy song like in a Disney movie. And suddenly, because you did what you hated, summer is fun again.

As I was weeding my flowerbeds, this idea dawned on me that sometimes we gotta do what we hate to get the results we want. I started thinking about the "weeds" at work that I wait too long to pull.

At work, the weeds look like work we don't want to do and conversations we don't want to have. And because of Marcus, Tom, and other strengths gurus, we hide behind the idea that we're simply working in our strengths and it's ok if a few weeds grow in our weak areas.

The problem is that a weed's sole purpose in life is to take over. There's no such thing as a single weed. They grow, they spread, and they steal the water, nutrients, and sunshine from the plants you intended to grow.

Sometimes you gotta do what you hate.

Today that might mean:

-  you put aside the work you love for a few hours and tackle that pile of paperwork on your desk (finally!). 

- you have a tough conversation about poor performance with a member of your team.

- you bring up a difficult issue to your boss.

- you report a co-worker's unethical or damaging behavior to HR. 

- you take the time to plan out your day (if you're more of a doer than a planner).

- you skip the planning today and just start doing (if you're more of a planner than a doer).

- you make that call to ask your client to extend a deadline because you know that cramming to meet the deadline will result in sub-standard work.

- you make that call to the client you know you need to "fire" and finally pull the trigger. 

If none of these weeds are yours, just look around your life for about twenty seconds. You'll find some weeds. You know they are there.

To fully motivate yourself, spend a few minutes visualizing the results you really want and picture how those weeds are getting in the way of those results. If you're like me, this little exercise is usually enough to spark some action.

Even in a great job, you won't love everything, and there will always be things you have to do that you don't really want to do.

The most successful people really do work mostly in their strengths. But if you look closely, you'll find that they also accept (and act on) the idea that sometimes you gotta do what you hate to get the results you want.

 

See you next week!

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