Picky people are kind of annoying. They are never happy and something always needs to be a little different. My rant today starts from my own experience.
People are too picky when it comes to their work. If someone is working at a company and their work is not "exactly" what they want to be working on or doing, they tend to complain. But if you look at the rest of that same person's life you will see them not nearly as picky. For example, in the games we play there are all sorts of game mechanics that make us do all sorts of things that we may not like, but we still have fun. Why can't the same be true with work?
Why are we more picky with what we do at work than we would be for anything else?
In my current job running PerBlue, almost 90% of what I do are things that I would classify as not fun work for me. Paper work, details of contracts, spending lots of time on the phone, lots of time writing, spelling and proofing, helping people with their problems, helping fix problems that others caused, and being accountable but not in control of what others create.
About 9 months ago I was like, "this kind of sucks, I am not doing what I want to be doing." But I realized something, is this job fun? Yes. It may not be fun for the 90% of daily tasks that I do. It's fun in the larger goal of what we are accomplishing. It's about the people I work with. It's about the challenge of the market space our company is in. It's those very short moments when things just work. That's what is fun.
This is the same work, but I get a completely different feeling because I get my enjoyment from "something" in the work, and I don't worry about the other 95% of things. I think a lot of people would enjoy their work a lot more if they just weren't so picky with how they get enjoyment. Ignore the 95% of crap and focus on the 5% of enjoyment. There are lots of ways to enjoy a situation.
