Occupation: Doer
I have a bit of a confession to make. I am suffering a bit of guilt at the present.
It isn’t because I have recently murdered somebody or extorted billions of dollars from investors like that twerp in the USA did.
My guilt stems from the fact that I still work somewhere in an industry, which I no longer am interested in a career in, and am actively looking to get out.
It was a guilt, which has stemmed from a number of directions. Initially, I was feeling guilty because I was letting myself down, knowing that my passion had left the building long before I was going to, and knowing that I had subjected myself to months of interminable hard slog trying to get through everyday with some sort of achievement and continuing motivation.
But since then, my guilt has begun to change shape. I am still lacking in passion to remain in my current career of engineering, and am still hugely excited by a potential chance to move into my dream career in the army. However, I have guilt that I’m letting others down. Other people that I work for and work with.
If you have any prior knowledge of my work situation, I worked in an engineering group, which I found rather boring, and the work completely unstimulating. The people with whom I worked were great, but the work, which they were able to endow me with, was somewhat uninspiring. This drove my wanting to get out even harder.
But since then, I have changed departments, and now work some similarly nice people. The difference however is that my boss provides me with much more stimulating work, so much as to say that just now, he has given me a dream project, which synthesises all the areas of plant engineering I remain interested in.
So my guilt is in a sense a feeling of the betrayal I will inflict on my current employer if I am fortunate to gain my dream job. I feel guilty that, after only a short while working with a great team of people, with whom I already feel I am building a good rapport that I will be leaving them for another hopefully great team of people.
However, there comes a realisation that I must say is a welcome addition to my thinking on the matter.
In life, we don’t have simply one career. We have many. I’m not sure of the exact figures, but I feel it could be as many as five.
But every job we have, whether it follows the line of training we are in, or is completely different, as my current and dream careers are, all our careers go on to form an entity which plays a significant role in defining each and every one of us.
While ever we are employed, as a do-er, if you will, we are building up ourselves as people. We are laying the foundations for futures, when we have to confront and negotiate all the challenges that we are faced with in modern life. Employment anywhere will always develop some particular skills, be it in business, the military, or the clergy. Be the skills technical, procedural, or interpersonal in nature.
Just because we learn things in one area of life, and then decide that isn’t where we wish to be in the future, it does not render all our learning completely wasted.
This is how I initially felt, when I made my decision to change careers. I felt that I was wasting a lot of peoples time and money, including my own, because I was not going to be achieving for the business where I worked, as a qualified engineer.
However this is misguided. It is true that I will (hopefully) never be an engineer at this company, because I no longer feel the passion I did previously, for this particular career.
But, the skills I have learnt, and the application, which I have had to implement to learn them, or the work I have completed and the ethic which I have displayed whilst working on them, are all valuable to a person.
These learnings steel you to what you know you can achieve. They give you confidence in your ability, and are also an excellent way to market yourself, for you future, whether you wish to change to something related or unrelated.
This realisation has been of huge help to me. It makes me realise that while the nuts and bolts outcomes of what I may be doing in the here and now may be without use to me in the future, they will be of use to somebody else. But, more importantly, the things that I have learnt, while doing each and every job, are invaluable for the future.
Sure, the technicalities might be different, but the overall processes are often implicitly similar. But even higher order again, the ethics in business are wholly interchangeable no matter where you go. As is virtues such as professional courtesy, conscientiousness and zeal.
This is, in effect, an around-about way of saying that anything that is worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability, or at as close to the best you are able to muster at a given point in time. Other factors, such as motivation, play a key role.
But if you enable yourself to see this truth, that everything you do will be of benefit to you at some point in the future, in some way, the perhaps this will change your motivation, by raising it in some measure.
So why not be a doer, no matter what you’re doing. Don’t see yourself as an engineer, a soldier, an accountant, or a priest. See yourself as a doer. Each thing that you might do in your life is of value, no matter how insignificant it may seem. If you use every opportunity to do, rather than just coast, you may very well achieve what you truly desire, and be much better at it because of your doings.
