Why not be fantastic?

However you happen to be earning a living at the moment, why not be fantastic at it?

You’re spending approximately 2080 hours a year doing it. That’s roughly 36% of your waking hours (not including prep and commute time, and assuming you work a 40-hour week).

You DO have a choice to make.  Make it now:

• [A] I choose to spend more than a third of my life absentmindedly waiting for the other two-thirds of my life.
• [B] I choose to resent at least a third of my life because it is a total pain in my ass.
• [C] I choose to bear whatever it takes in order to afford the toys I want.
• [D] I choose to be Fantastic at my work, because I understand that when I know I’ve done a great job, it makes me feel great!  Feeling great makes me happy.

The choice is yours.  Make it. And make it with your eyes wide open and be honest with yourself.

YAYwork!

Follow your Passion?

What does that even mean?

There are a plethora of  platitudes circulating in our society in support of the idea of Following Your Passion. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Actualize your aspirations. Follow your dreams.

The first challenge to Following Your Passion is that very few people HAVE a passion.

I am fortunate to have daily interactions with a diverse socioeconomic cross-section of people in the Washington D.C. region.  From the middle aged woman that makes a living dog sitting in her modest 1952 rambler inside the beltway, to the uber-wealthy husbands-and-wife cosmetic surgeons living in a 12,000 square foot home in Great Falls, Virginia, and everything in between.  As I work in their homes for several hours, we often build a quite intimate rapport.  Being a topic of interest to me, I often turn the conversation toward what motivates them.

“What are you passionate about?” I ask.

The responses vary little.

Pause. Loooong pause. “Um, well, that’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about that very thing. My family?”

Follow your passion. First, you have to have one.

It worked well for me as a youth. I could be anything I wanted to be. Do anything. I had plenty of passions s a child.  At 6 I wanted to be a carpenter (we were having an addition put on our house). At 9 I wanted to be a stay-at-home dad (mine was not around). At 12 it was a professional soccer player. At 16 I wanted to be Scarface. At 20, I had a beautiful 20 year plan that involved professional athletics, author, chef, artist and ultimately a middle aged husband to a 27 year-old and father of 4.  Then, at 21, I met my wife.  Time to earn a living. A living that was not just good enough for me, but good enough for me, a wife and some children.  And my parents. And my friends on Facebook.

All of those experiences I gathered in pursuit of my varied passions were, and are, still with me.  All of them make me who I am.

For well over a decade I made a living in Retail. Working for one of the best Retailers in the world, I made a fine living and learned an amazing amount about leadership, management, communication and love.  I also came to understand how all-consuming a career is.  Even with 5 weeks of vacation a year, there isn’t enough time in a day, a week, a month to have a full life.  To love, explore, build, create, learn, make mistakes, date, play, dream.  There wasn’t enough time to follow passion.  There wasn’t enough energy to winnow out grains of passion that might have a chance to sprout.

Well, to be fair, there was enough.  Enough time.  Enough energy. But I quashed it, knowing that any sprouts would place the balance of my status quo in jeopardy.  As fine as I may have been with an altered status, there were more people to consider.

2 years ago I made time to dream. 11 months ago I took action. 8 months ago I made a leap. Today, I am still uncertain what things will look like in a year.  I am happy, though.

I am not Following My Passion. I am pursuing a life that has a different balance than the one I led for so many years. With this new balance, I prioritize the nurturing of the seeds of passion. Or are they simply seeds of interest? Perhaps one or two of them will grow vigorously and bear fruit.

Don’t follow your passion. Take it with you wherever you go.

Much love to Mike Rowe, who inspires me with his works. I have most recently loved his chat with Guy Raz on the TED Radio Hour. Check out the show with Mike Rowe here.

YAY Work!

 

Today, I was fortunate enough to get to hang out with my friend Martin. I’ve worked with him off and on for a bit over a decade. He is great fun!

As an employee, he was tough – the brilliant, insightful, full of ideas, talented, charismatic, fun, confident Dream of an employee, yet he was also unpredictable, inconsistent and prone to drama. A Nightmare to manage.

Now, I have the opportunity to partner with him in a separate business venture.

Will I get the Dream, or the Nightmare? Can I trust him with my reputation? Can I harness his good side to astonish our customers and earn a profit?

What would you do?

My main drain was clogged.  Sewer drain, you dirty minded rascal.

After 3 hours of trying, I admitted that the 50-foot drain snake I had on hand wasn’t enough to reach the clog. Sewage was still filling our downstairs tub and toilet. So my wife called a plumber.

The following day, the plumber arrived 20 minutes after the end of the 6 hour window we were quoted. He parked his van facing the wrong way on our street, left it running and retrieved a commercial sized drain auger from the back.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes!” I exclaimed as I met him at the curb. “We’re so excited to get the house smelling normal again.”

“U huh.” He replied.

“I’m Alex.” I said.

“Hey.” Hey replied.

He’s not in a great mood, I guessed.  Well, I’d make things easy for him.

“Main drain access is right here in the yard. I’ve removed the cap, and there’s an electrical outlet for the auger right there.” I said, pointing.

Wordlessly, he went about the job at hand. Ten minutes later he returned his machine to the van.

“It’s clear,” he said flatly.

“Wow, that’s awesome! I’m impressed at how fast you are.” I complimented.

He climbed in his van, closed the door, and began writing up an invoice. A few minutes later he emerged and handed me a sheet of paper.

“Six-hundred dollars,” he said. “And I don’t take checks.”

 

Considering the $3,600 an hour rate I was charged, I think maybe I’ll go to trade school to be a plumber. Considering the plumber’s gruff demeanor, maybe it’s not as much fun a trade as I might have wished.

In any case, the whole experience left a lot to be desired. But the most disconcerting part to me was that not once in our one-sided interaction did he make eye contact with me.

That plumber may have a vibrant personal life. Maybe he is a world class guitarist. Perhaps he heads up a great number of community outreach programs for his church. Or his oil paintings are in great demand world-wide.

To me, he was the gruff, creepy, ridiculously expensive plumber that I would never hire again.

And to me, he was his work.

I went to Starbucks yesterday morning, as I do most mornings. I was tired, it was early, and I wanted my coffee.

Most of the employees at Starbucks stores act as if they are there for one of two reasons: they need the paycheck, or their friends hang out there. A very small portion of employees choose to acknowledge, engage and empathize with the customers.

Eleven 14-hour days in a row at my job had me pooped, and not my normal, bubbly self at 6:30 on the morning of the twelfth day. Brittany recognized this and chose to take action.

She could have not noticed because she was busy with her own thoughts or talking to her coworkers. She could have noticed and chosen to ignore me.  She could have said that I looked tired.

Brittany’s chosen action was to draw a silly smiley face on my cup and present it to me with a grin.

Simple, I know. And probably in the Starbucks manual of barista conduct. But Brittany chose to take action. And it worked.

I had a great day! Thank you, Brittany! You are your work!

I’ve had the same mailman for twelve years. I used to talk to him. Our interactions always go the same way:

Cheerily, I greet him, “Good afternoon!”

“Is it?” he replies.

“Thank you!” I said when he handed me the mail instead of putting it in the box.

“It’s my job. And you’re closer than your mailbox anyway.”

In an attempt to focus him on a positive, I say, “Wow! You’ve got the perfect day for walking your route, don’t you! 62 degrees and sunny, without too much breeze.”

“I hadn’t noticed. I’m struggling with a crippling  flare up of  gout. But you need your mail, so here I am.”

 

My mailman sees hundreds of the same people every day, for years.  He has ample opportunity to connect, to enjoy, to have an impact, and to make a difference.

He has chosen not to.

He is his work.