The Startling Benefits of Taking Some #&@?*%! Responsibility
Or: Things Go Dramatically Better When You Tend to Them
The ideas and suggestions in these emails (and in the book I’m writing about all this) stem from several core principles. In this short run of emails, I’m setting those principles out.
The last email was about a foundational one—that work’s a huge part of your life, and shouldn’t be a price you pay: it should be one of the things that makes your life fulfilling and fun.
Here’s the second principle.
The Startling Benefits of Taking Some #&@?*%! Responsibility
Or: Things Go Dramatically Better When You Tend to Them
A lot of people’s working lives are worse than they’d wish, and many don’t tackle that, whether by leaving a crappy job, fixing how they handle stress, or improving their working lives in some other way.
Why don’t we do things we could do to improve our working lives?
There are lots of reasons for inaction: because doing something about it feels daunting, or because of worries it could go wrong, or because of believing this is just how it has to be, or because of thinking the problem’s you, or because of thinking the problem isn’t you.
But you don’t get to relive these years if you haven’t lived them as you’d want. And:
Feeling daunted: things that feel daunting typically turn out to be easier, and more rewarding, than you expect. I guarantee you’ve had that experience many times before.
Worrying that it could go wrong: that’s a healthy worry, but it’s a reason for care and caution, not for avoidance.
Believing this is just how it has to be: maybe. But often not. Are you committing the arrival fallacy—the false belief that something ahead is going to make everything ok, and you just have to hang in there for now? Some spend their whole lives in the arrival fallacy.
Thinking the problem’s you: it may well not be, and you’re missing an opportunity to improve your working circumstances. And, if you’re right, great! It’s within your power to fix it! (If you doubt that, read about growth mindset.)
Thinking the problem’s not you: could you be avoiding an opportunity for self-improvement? (My life was transformed by learning how to get better at handling work stress—but only after I recognized this was my problem to fix.) And, if you’re right, and it’s not you, that just shifts the focus to what you can do to improve your working circumstances.
Then there’s the problem of having been implicitly trained to put up with grinding circumstances for the sake of the future. Uncomplaining perseverance even acquires a misplaced air of virtue. Some Great Work readers are (like me) doctors who have had years of this training early in their careers, but others will recognise this: it’s not just doctors. Once more: the arrival fallacy. You get to live these years only once.
So …
This second Great Work principle says: we often have more agency than we think. Things may be out of your control. But are you sure about that? Usually, there’s something you can do about a crappy situation—and often with life-changing results.
What it is you can do obviously varies. But here are a few ideas—the commonest things we avoid, with links to stuff I’ve written about them.
If it’s you
I spent a good part of my working life not handling stressful working situations well, and that’s fixable. This is a major Great Work theme: often, it’s the reaction, not the stuff. Sometimes, you just need to get better at saying no.
If it’s the job
Do you know what you want to do, and what you really don’t? Are you in an irredeemably bad job and you just need to get out? Or is there a conversation you’ve been avoiding, perhaps with a boss or a colleague, that’s the first and necessary step to fixing things?
If it’s the organization or team
There are all sorts of things that can go wrong in teams and small organizations. In teams of people who do vocational work they care about, by far the commonest problem I encounter is that they’re way better at being kind than at being businesslike. (Video version.) Yet being businesslike—which means having systems for identifying and foreseeing challenges and opportunities, making intelligent decisions about how to address them, and then actually implementing those decisions—is a prerequisite for being kind, to the people they serve, and to themselves. Teams can get way better at this.
One approach that helps is shifting from an “It’s a crisis” mindset to “It’s a challenge.”
If it’s your life
Are you actually doing, regularly, the system-critical things—looking after your sleep, getting regular exercise, enjoying regular leisure, and looking forward to replenishing vacations—that you know we all need, even in the toughest of weeks? If not, what can you do about that?
It’s your choice
If you’re not doing things you could do to improve your working life, you’re making a choice. Here’s Mark Manson, in his book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck (which I’ve just read for the first time and discovered to be wiser and more fun than I’d anticipated):1
Whether we like it or not, we are always taking an active role in what’s occurring to and within us. We are always interpreting the meaning of every moment and every occurrence. We are always choosing the values by which we live and the metrics by which we measure everything that happens to us. Often the same event can be good or bad, depending on the metric we choose to use.
The point is, we are always choosing, whether we recognize it or not. Always.
Is there something you could fix?
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Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Harper, 2016, page 95.