Work Rant 2.0
September 29th, 2005 -- Posted in rants | 2 Comments »Work… work… work… and more work…
What’s more in my mind beyond a whole day of work? More work! I guess that’s the price I have to pay for doing the extra mile in a corporate marathon. This was what I started envisioning when I first got this job. This was what I asked for… more challenges… more responsibilties… more WORK!
The only difference I noticed between my co-workers and myself is that while many draw their motivation from monetary rewards, I fuel my drive from the sense of achievement. What does this make me? An easy prey for labor exploitation! How so? Think about this…
What would you tell your subordinates to get them to work harder?
Work hard to show the results this year, and we will all meet the target and go home with big fat bonuses.
Now, does this help me spend more hours in the office or agree to take more projects? Not really. What makes me willing to push the tank for an extra mile is simple. Only two words:
Well Done.
This will only tell me at the end of the day that I will only find myself easily satisfied by the 2 simple words and stretching the hours I’m willing to fork per day on work… for what? Two words that can sound like a billion dollars worth yet can worth so little it can practically be FOC. No material binding. No gold tagging. Management Course 101: Motivate your employee with encouraging words. My manager can save his/her tuition fees and stop the course at this.
All this brought forth the idealist principles I call the Logic of Greed.
- The less I make, the less I’d desire.
- The less I desire, the less I’d own.
- The less I own, the less I’d spend.
- The less I spend, the less I’d owe.
In reality, the first line is subjective. I can desire even when I don’t make, when my discipline is loose. While the second line is logically true and realistic, one can sometimes still spend more, depending on what they own. Alas, the final line alone reflects the modern spending habits. Spending power these days can easily be virtualized larger than reality, by the future spending ability of the credit cards.
So do I really want to minimize what I owe by downsizing what I make? The real world doesn’t work this way. The more one owes, the more a person would hope he/she can make.
So much for a logic…
[4:45pm] I feel the rush of excitement. I just finished with an hour long review with two of the most difficult supervisors. One has a keen eye for details and picks up little flaws very easily. The other is an indifferent perfectionist who would hardly let any review go smoothly. Both had just expressed approval to my performance. I am excited not because I heard the magic words, but because I know I have conquered the hardest rocks to crack on the floor.
