Associate the Meaning with Something Larger

In the bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, author Robert Fulghum discusses a bricklayer who merrily goes about his business while other workers seem to be plodding. When his buoyant laborer is asked how he can be so cheerful toiling all day long in the hot sun, while his colleagues seem to be less than excited about their work, he says, “They are laying bricks; I am helping to build a cathedral to celebrate the glory of God!”

Who knows whether or not the story is true, or if the bricklayer was even sane. The point is that whenever you face a task itself. Sure, some tasks you have been assigned may seem tedious and even uninspiring. Yet, your performance will surely affect your team, and what the team does will surely affect the division or department, which may affect the organization, which could conceivably affect society, ad infinitum.

On a piece of paper sketch out a simple diagram or flow chart of how your contribution impacts others, and so on. Keep that perspective in mind, and those mornings when you would rather not be at work will start to vanish.

One way I’ve been able to blast through any potential roadblocks and be a self-starter is to contemplate how the completion of a new chapter adds to the
overall progress of the work. It means that much more people will benefit from this.

The types of tasks and projects that you handle in your career undoubtedly affect others. Come on, you know that they do. Identify those players and related issues, and you will have an easier time getting started, day after day, even when it would be oh-so-inviting to simply “put things off” for a while.


Regards,


Timben