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That's an excellent and clear perspective. I am also going to point out something else that the author of the article misses that you get. When I was just out
by einhverfr 15y ago
That's an excellent and clear perspective.
I am also going to point out something else that the author of the article misses that you get.
When I was just out of college, I worked in a cafeteria for a year, serving food. Sometimes I washed dishes (300 people per meal to one dishwasher for dishes and one for pots and pans). One thing I found was that this was boring work, but there were ways I could make it fun. What was my limit in washing dishes? (with the mechanical help, about 450 people per meal before I had to ask for help).
Serving food? I'd identify all the foreign students and try to learn the food terms in as many languages as I could. Cutting turkey with a carving knife for sandwiches? I'd see if I could do as well as a deli slicer in thinness and consistency, as long as I could do it fast enough not to allow a line to form. Heck I even had Saudi students make up signs in Arabic to indicate pork and wine in dishes.
My bosses hated the fact that I played all these games. They also hated the fact that I would step in to help out the lunch cook when needed if it didn't mean totally abandoning my post. They said it wasn't my job and I was helping someone else be lazy. I said I was having fun and improving building skills at the same time. That said more about them than about me.
If there is one thing that has served me well in starting my business it's that approach. There is nothing so dull that it cannot be made a game out of, where I cannot challenge myself to do it better.
I would say though that it is important to have goals that don't always align with your dreams. Sometimes one has to make grunt-work interesting in seemingly meaningless ways, but those ways are never meaningless. For example (when I am living alone, which I sometimes do), I might challenge myself as to how little I can spend on food in a month while eating a healthy diet. Sometimes out of all this some degree of creativity is born, and that makes all the difference. Sometimes that creativity comes back to my business.
And so.....
Self-improvement is not something to be learned from a book. It comes from making actions into challenges, first a few, then many.... until it becomes a habit. When we exercise we get stronger. When we exercise our overall capacities we become greater.