On Work: Two years of working

Lessons I've picked up and some I'm still figuring out

I’ve been employed for two years now. I made the decision to go the corporate route to start earning an income and give substance to my CV to open up options. Let’s say a lot has happened in that two years. A lot of lessons learned, and still learning.

Get work done.

If you’re an employee, just get work done. You are constantly being evaluated on your output. So bring results.

Stuck in a rut? ask a more senior colleague for help, they’d be glad to help you out.

You’re selling your time and energy for pay that you often feel is not enough. Don’t waste it. Forget coming up with the most sophisticated or innovative solution. For many jobs, and often in business, if something works it’s good enough. ‘Good enough’ is often more than good enough.

Eigenrobot has written some advice on working. While it written for academics escaping… academia, the advice applies to most people fresh out of school.

Pockets of Time

You have more time than you think. It might not be huge stretches of time, like having a full hour to yourself. But pockets of 10-15 minutes throughout the day.

Make full use of those pockets of valuable time. Meditate. Write. Listen to music. Unwind (but mindfully). Learn something. Read Something. Talk to people.

I ride the train to work, it takes over an hour with 2 transits. So there’s about 15 to 20 minutes in each train, and 5 to 10 minute wait at each transit.

I wish I had a longer stretch of time to be able to immerse in language learning or reading without interruptions. But those 15 minutes are better than nothing.

Stretches of Time

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happens”
- Vladimir Lenin

A lot can happen in two years, and a lot has happened to me. But in that two years, there are stretches of time, which lasts a few weeks and up to a month or more, where almost nothing happens. They call it being on the bench: when jobs coming in has slowed or your superiors decide to give you a bit of a break (but you still have tasks to deliver).

These stretches of time are a godsend, but I shamefully admit I have not made the best use of it. Nothing is happening to me, but I am also not making things happen. Idle time, though weren’t completely wasted. I read books and reconnected with friends, but I wished I did more with that time when I had it.

That being said, there are weeks where plenty can happen. Say a planning several celebrations and organising work events, the next day you get a health scare, then a project with an expedited deadline, a minor road accident, a loss of a relative, maybe throw in some national crisis while you’re at it. Where things do get overwhelming, your on a roller coaster, having no time to process your emotions and it feels like there’s no relief.

But going back to my first point in this piece: just reach out to people. They would be glad to help (some more reluctant though). A lot of people want to help if you give yourself and them that chance.

People, People, People

Whatever industry, whatever job, you are going to have to talk to people. You’re going to have to work with people. You’re going to have to deal with people. You cannot avoid that.

Pick up some people skills, figure out what makes them tick. Build a network. Figure out who are the people you can learn the most and best from. Make some friends. Make friends with people in other departments. If you’re up for it, talk to your boss(es) too. You’ll raise your profile pretty quickly and leave an impression (good or bad).

Be friendly, be likeable but not a pushover. Be polite, but don’t kiss ass. If people like you, you reduce some friction in your job. You’re less likely to cause any office drama too.

The Suck

A system of cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked within one stem.

I spent countless days looking at spreadsheets checking for typos, errors in formulas and making sure the right cells are linked with the right cells. Being the consulting industry and occasionally work to support audit teams comes with long working hours for weeks on end.

While I could not predict which days I would have to work even after the midnight oil’s all burnt up, audit season is constant each year, and engagements tend to be the busiest at the start and end of a project. Thankfully, I have not had the misfortune of working a tight project on top of audit season. Yet.

Work is gonna suck. No way around that. The Suck are the not-so trivial things that makes you want to pull your hair out and scream. Things like a difficult colleague or customer. A bug with the computer program. Emails piling up like snow after a blizzard, or no one responding to your texts and hails. They are the pebbles in your shoe. The Suck is also the everyday things, no excitement or drama, where you just cannot quite get yourself engaged with a task. Where you feel like you have to be somewhere else but cannot go anywhere.

Though, you might find, often enough but not always, some challenge worth taking up, or something engaging making it worthwhile. Maybe it’s a goal you set for yourself, something you want to learn, a skill to build or experience to have had. But they run alongside the Suck.

You’re going to have to put up with it everyday, everyone goes through it. Some more than others. But, learn to be grateful for that structure in your life.

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
- Albert Camus