Ventilation

Friday, August 26, 2005

Roots at Work (part 2)

Services jobs are more about being reactive, professional jobs about being proactive. Your usual style ought to determine which of these jobs you’ll feel most comfortable in.

In my experience, many people caught between pride and faith excel at resolving problems or responding to situations. Getting to the bottom of a problem is a very quick way to boost your ego and reaffirm your own self-importance. I would expect prideful people to do very well in jobs where they can find short paths to success.

I also know several people with the root issue of greed vs. hope who are excellent planners and have great foresight. I would expect them to strive in professional careers where they can indulge their obsession with the future.

However, this doesn’t leave a job category for those who struggle with lust. And to further complicate, since I know very few people who are likely to struggle here, it is impossible for me to generalize based on patterns I have observed anyway. The good news for me is this. I have finally found someone who acknowledges their own struggle with lust, and perhaps we will make sense of this root issue after all.

In the meantime, for those of us in professional jobs, here’s something to think about. Take your salary and divide it by 2000, the average number of hours a person works each year. Did you earn as much as you were paid in the last hour?

Now divide your hourly rate by 12. That’s how much you get paid to go to the bathroom.

Or divide your hourly rate by 6. That’s how much your company pays you every time you go out for a cigarette break.

Should you really be in such a rush to get out the door at exactly 4:59?

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Roots at Work

There are two types of jobs you can have; one where you’re paid for your time and one where you’re paid for what you provide.

A good example of the former is someone who works at the customer service desk in a department store. He is there in case any customers come along and need help. If no one needs help, he still deserves his pay, because his job is to be there, period. This person does not have to think about what he should start doing, he only has to wait for someone to ask him to start doing something, then he must do it, and later he can go back to waiting again.

Most people employed in the services industry are paid in a corresponding manner, by the hour.

A doctor is another example of someone working in the services industry, and they are paid not only for their time, but also for their equipment, their office space, their signature, etc. But still, they are on an itemized pay scheme.

The rest of the jobs, and probably most jobs which pay a fixed salary, are not so well defined. In fact, I don’t even have a good word to describe the industry. I shall use "professional" although it is not the word I would like to use.

In most of these jobs you are employed to play a certain role in a company. A project manager is a good example. You may be given a description of your role just once, and after that you are expected to make decisions and take action in order to provide the results that should be provided through your role. You must think about what you should start doing and do it. You are most likely expected to recognize what others ought to be doing as well. In order to understand your own role, you have to understand the roles of everyone else you interact with.

Many people in professional jobs are very confused about this system. They mistake the idea of “management” for the itemized pay scheme of the services industry. They sit around and wait to be told what to do, and they’re very surprised when their contribution is questioned. They believe that if no one has asked them to do anything, they still deserve their pay, because their job is to be there.

Actually, they are in the wrong career.

To be continued…

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Anthropology

Have you ever discovered two people living the same life? One is 20 years behind the other, but Nathon is living Kelly’s life. All the major milestones are right; even some of the minor details are there.

Ally has been a friend of friends for some time, but it was only recently that we properly met. In many ways we are living the same life. And Layne is living our life 10 years ahead of us.

I am fascinated.

I wonder how many variations of life there really are. If you reduce it down to the fundamentals: personality, the type of family you are born into, the type of family you choose to produce, relative financial security, geographic and religious culture; even if each of these splinters us into ten segments, you can still expect to find one person exactly like you in every million you meet.

I guess that really does make each of us one in a million.

I presume history underpins and redefines the fundamentals. Or maybe that’s what creates the average man. There is a clear difference between the generation who lived through World War 2 and those who live now that the diagnosis of ADHD has replaced a parent’s responsibility to discipline. Perhaps the average man simply oscillates through history, much like Israel.

Alas, I am merely a closet psychologist. People are far easier to understand than the cultures they create.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Balance

Why does it feel so good to be somewhere in the middle?

When I started my first job I was asked to fill out a Birkman questionnaire; basically another personality test, the results designed to help teams understand each other and therefore work together more effectively.

Upon review of my results, and even further as we reviewed the results of my new team, I got the impression that having a usual style somewhere in the middle of the color square was most desirable. And those who were extremely yellow, for example, were essentially the purpose of our teaming session, the ones we’d all have to learn to love.

Based on my experiences, balance has come to mean an absolute zero tendency toward anything, similar to that place where you have no desire of your own. And therefore, balance is desirable because it is a state of neutrality toward self.

But Elvis was right when he said balance is equal amounts of extremes. In fact, that is the actual definition.

Balance is a state of confusion, not peace.

Equal measures of opposing pressures must cause someone to struggle with themselves constantly.

If we are to overcome our root issues, balance must not be our goal. We must go beyond it and begin to favor of our root good.

Balance is only halfway there.