“It's easier to get a smart person to do something hard than to get them to do something easy that doesn't matter.”
So says author and podcaster Shane Parrish in his popular blog Farnam Street.
I think he’s exactly right.
Hard inspires people of ability to rise to the occasion.
Doesn’t matter disillusions and embitters them.
Unfortunately, the latter better describes my work experience than the former.
I’ve spent far more time bitter than I have inspired.
And why is that?
Two things would have to be true.
First, that I’m smart.
And second, that I can rightly judge what does and does not matter.
Neither should go unchallenged.
Looking back over my life, I can find ample evidence to disprove both.
I’ve made numerous choices that can only be described as stupid.
And, on too many occasions, I’ve completely ignored what really matters, even while it was staring me right in the face.
That’s the stuff of regret, of which I carry my fair share.
Still, I’ve had plenty of demands made of me—or attempted to be made—at which any reasonable person would balk.
And I usually slow-rolled the people making the demands in the hopes they would simply forget.
Or, I flatly refused to do whatever it was they were demanding of me.
Often, I would slow-roll them for a while and then refuse.
Which had consequences.
To which, I would usually say, fuck it.
Even my beloved Navy would occasionally put me in such a position.
I once worked for a captain who’d allowed himself to become embroiled in a petty, personal dispute with another captain on the other side of the planet.
He somehow reported to this officer through a dotted-line, matrixed relationship.
I neither understood it nor cared to.
But I did care when the captain to whom I reported would try to drag me into conference calls with the guy.
Some at four o’clock in the morning.
The calls were apparently scheduled at times of the other guy’s convenience, not ours.
And the only reason I would ever attend one, according to my captain, would be to provide support.
Whatever the hell that meant.
I actively avoided them.
But that didn’t stop the captain from trying to task me with various things that came out of such meetings.
The group to which we belonged sent out a half dozen daily reports that provided updates on various activities.
No one ever read them.
But we still did them.
There was just no getting around it.
I was responsible for a couple of these reports, which I knocked out in the first thirty minutes of every workday.
One morning, the captain decided that I should do an extensive analysis of a year’s worth of reports to identify certain trends.
I judged the task would consume several hours over the course of a week.
And, when complete, I further judged that no one would likely give a shit about the results.
Just as no one gave a shit about the reports themselves.
Worse, we didn’t have any sort of specialized software with which to conduct the analysis.
It was all spreadsheets and word documents.
The analysis would be manual.
And incredibly tedious.
Not hard.
But annoying.
When I shared all this with the captain, he brushed it aside.
And then he revealed the purpose of the analysis:
To provide him with some bit of trivia with which to zing the other captain in one of their meetings.
His antagonist was apparently convinced one thing was happening, based upon anecdotes and assumptions.
The captain disagreed but lacked the data to prove it.
And, being slow-witted, he was often bested by the other guy during debates on the topic.
No doubt, the other captain was a complete asshole.
I’d observed that myself.
And I was one hundred percent on board with zinging the guy.
But no fucking way was I going to waste a second of my time on some worthless analysis to do so.
When I told the captain that, he was taken aback.
He assumed the other captain was our common enemy and that taking him down in some stupid meeting was our common cause.
I assured him he was wrong on both counts.
I didn’t give a shit about the other guy and neither should he, I told him.
Not only should I not waste my time on his analysis, but neither should anyone else.
The captain should instead put on his big-boy pants and have an adult conversation with the other captain to reset the relationship.
“So let me make sure I understand what you’re saying,” said the captain. “You are unwilling to do what I’m asking you. Is that correct?”
I think what you’re asking me to do is a gross misuse of time and resources, I replied, and you shouldn’t ask me—or anyone else—to do it.
And that ended the discussion.
And changed the nature of the relationship between the captain and me.
He didn’t seem to think much of me after that.
But so what?
He wrote me a damn-with-faint-praise fitness report upon my departure, which seemed harmless enough in the broader context of my career.
Still, there are certainly no stars in my future.
I can’t say whether the captain hurt me.
But he certainly didn’t help.
And that’s one of the consequences of thinking you’re smarter than your boss and making your own decisions about what you will and won’t do.
I do have to give the captain credit for being honest about his intent, though.
He at least told me, truthfully, why he wanted the analysis.
I’ve had other bosses attempt to task me with things equally as worthless, but without any explanation.
Or, worse, some made-up, bullshit reason that any mildly competent person could see right through.
Now, I know how this all sounds.
And you’re exactly right.
I can be an incredibly shitty employee.
I don’t dispute that.
But I do love to work.
On stuff that actually matters.
And I’ve learned the pursuit of meaningful work is one of life’s most important endeavors.
Also one the toughest.
I’ve also failed at times to recognize what truly matters when it’s disguised as something trivial.
Like when my daughter asked me to chase her.
Kids love to be chased.
“Chase me, Daddy!” she said.
The trouble was, we’d just finished brunch, and I had on my nice shoes, and I didn’t want to mess up the shine . . .
And it was getting warm outside, and I didn’t want to sweat . . .
And why couldn’t she just get one of the other kids to chase her?
Or just run around on her own?
Why did I have to do it?
Maybe later, I told her.
Having no intention whatsoever of ever chasing her.
Which was totally the wrong call.
I missed an opportunity to do something that mattered—really, truly mattered—that I would never get back.
And I regret that.
Telling the captain to piss off?
No regrets.
Passing up an opportunity to share a moment of joy with my young daughter?
Profound regrets.
So, the moral of the story:
If you think you’re smart to enough to know what’s important and are willing to stand up to those who would distract you from it, do it.
Take that stand.
But understand there may be consequences.
And the next time a kid says, “Chase me!” don’t hesitate.
Whether she’s five or thirty-five,
Chase the fucking kid.
And listen to her shriek with delight as you do.
That is what matters.
What really, truly matters.
Smart guy.