I called someone who works for me cynical yesterday. But then, listening to myself, and the way I talk about clients and colleagues (who are really internal clients), I acknowledged that I sound pretty cynical, too. Where I would draw the line between myself and the guy who reports to me is that he has not earned the right to be cynical about our clients – he does not have the experience to know this disappointment… but I do.
Oh, woe is me. Yesterday I posted something somewhere via ideasareawesome – there are a few bullets that stand out to me as the most important to what I want to say here (and yes, I realize that I’m not getting to the point very quickly):
- Great clients lead to more great clients (and more great work).
- Bad clients lead to more bad clients (and more bad work).
- Bad clients take up more of your time than they should.
- Meanwhile, we take great clients for granted.
- The trick is to reverse this.
These things are true, I know they are true, I protested in favor of their truth for several years. But now I am in a job – I chose to be in it – where these things are still true, but where I have lost the… will? ability? clout? opportunity? to effect the full-throated advocacy for the great client. And I realized why that is: I am behind a firewall.
Wikipedia’s definition of a firewall is illuminating: A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications.
I’ve been behind firewalls before, when I was fairly new to the businesses I’ve been in. But the firewall was lifted, or at least significantly loosened, very soon after I joined because I earned the right to flexibility in outbound communications, and the trust that I would handle appropriately inbound communications.
In my last job, as a partner in the company, there was no true firewall at all – and when it looked like one was a-comin’ I left.
This company is made up of a maze of firewalls. Information is transmitted unidirectionally, often through multiple layers, and is frequently encrypted. Information is also time-limited – what is true today may not be true tomorrow. And information is controlled – you don’t always know what you don’t know.
This is very difficult to accept for me – and may be one of the chief reasons I decided that enough was enough and that it was time for me to move on. I have always believed that true power within any organization is best earned through the distribution of knowledge, not through the hoarding of data. Which probably makes me a teacher and not a leader in the traditional sense. I dunno.
…
So I was out last night on a ‘drinks thing’ with a fairly interesting guy that I’m not interested in, if you get my drift. And I was describing my disaffection with the job I have now. I described my boredom, my lack of a defined role, my long stretches of hours in which there is simply nothing for me to do. He called that the ‘perfect job’ because you can spend all those hours figuring out what you would really rather be doing and incubate a whole business out of it.
I don’t disagree. But there is going to come a moment when I will have to make a choice – that moment may come sooner than planned. And then the ‘perfect job’ – in which I can do what I’m doing now and procrastinate my appearance at the office to blog about my disaffection will have to be sacrificed for actually, you know, doing stuff.
Oh – I was going to tell you why I haven’t blogged regularly as promised. I suspect that I punish myself for not doing what I think I ought to do by withholding writing from my life. That literally just occurred to me (mark the date and time! an epiphany!). I didn’t make much progress towards my goal last week, and I didn’t follow up with the people I said I would, and I went out and got myself one really spectacular hangover. I think, somewhere, deep down, I felt I didn’t deserve this plan, or this practice of writing about the process of planning. I felt like I was wasting time. I often feel like I’m wasting time – that I am doing things instead of other things I’d rather be doing, that I’m constantly tuning the piano but never playing.
What is the secret to overcoming all this angst and ennui we pile on ourselves because we spend a lot of time working for someone else’s so-so idea, when we have a decent one ourselves? I’m not sure but I suspect it involves a little of the following – yes, I always try to leave it on an ‘up’ note:
- My Buddhist therapist calls it ‘self-love’ – taking care of yourself first, not punishing yourself, not descending down a path of sweeping negative judgments because that way lies depression. Get 8 hours of sleep (HT Arianna Huffington), eat food you cooked, stretch your body and move it around, go outside. In response to my bad hangover, after a good chat with my therapist, I went down to ABC Carpet & Home and bought myself a meditation pillow. I’ll be honest – I haven’t used it yet; but it is a reminder to me to slow down and breathe.
- Give yourself some credit. I am here putting off the perceived hassle of walking three blocks to the subway, waiting for the train, sitting or standing on the train for 20 minutes, and then walking three more blocks. I know that I have no tasks to perform today, no ‘thing’ I need to be doing. My job is to, frankly, wait, advise, respond, execute. I feel guilty for not doing anything. But one of my dear friends just admonished me, “oh puleeze! call it a makeup day for all those saturdays you had to do whateverthefuck. no guilt. it’s not like you’ve never done anything.” She’s right. I do plenty. I’m ready for sprints and marathons whenever someone is ready to pull the trigger on the starter pistol. I can take however many days of not doing much are required before I have to do everything. And I can use that time productively.
- Set specific appointments with specific goals attached to them. I’m reading Natalie Goldberg’s book Thunder and Lightning, and she recommends setting aside time to write with specificity. I will go to this place at this time and do this kind of writing for 30 minutes, or 20 pages, or whatever. Put it in your date book or your iPhone/Blackberry/Droid. Set a reminder. Show the time as busy. You have to go – it’s an appointment. I am helped by having someone else to be accountable to – I meet with someone to talk it over, or I set time to call them to talk it over. She talks about making the promise to herself, “But Nat, you said you’d write today…” Do what works.
- One of the best and completely sua sponte things I ever did was during my trip to Miami – I set time in a different way, and assigned that time a task I didn’t usually think of as a task. Time was calculated as, “walking from my hotel to the end of the jetty and back.” The task was, “think about what Charlotte and I could do together. Crack the problem.” I still think that the idea I had was pretty brilliant, and the walk along that beach, with my feet in warm Atlantic water, spectacular storm clouds mounting overhead, was one of the most productive ‘ideation’ sessions I’ve ever experienced. All I really did was assign myself a problem and a deadline.
And you see, I think that’s what I’m seeking, a “perfect job” that isn’t about simulating and perfecting a process, but about solving problems in the best way you can think of, about releasing yourself from formalized and often quite useless places and structures and firewalls, and using your whole brain and heart to solve the problem. When I made the list of the things I’ve done, the hats I’ve worn, I realized that I am a generalist, and not in the sense, as my companion last night so artfully put it, of the ‘strategist’ – but of the Thinker Who Does.
So I’ve got all day – what shall I do first?