Stick to What You Love

I missed posting last night because I fell victim to one of the classic blunders.  The most famous, of course, is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”  The second, only slightly less well known, is “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

The third, and the one I learned the hard way last night, is this: “Never trust your brother when he says something will ‘only take five minutes.’”

I should have known better, too.  After all, he’d already been working on the project for a good hour, banging on pipes and sawing things and tossing out the occasional curse.  I also should have known better because, even though he’s a year younger than me, I’ve been following him into harm’s way for 35 years.  It’s amazing how our memories fail us at such critical moments in our lives.

“Jerry,” he said.  ”Can you give me a hand?  I’m almost done with this and just need a hand pulling this line through.  It should only take five minutes.”  I ventured into the work zone, and was astonished by what I saw.  It looked like every tool in the garage was being used.  There were three different kinds of Makita devices, drills, grinders, lights, wrenches of various shapes and sizes…I think there was even a hammer, just in case.  It seemed a little excessive.  Worse, it seemed like plumbing.

“What are you doing?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“No big deal,” he said, another signal that I should run the other way.  ”Just running a water line to the ice-maker on the refrigerator.”  I knew it.  Plumbing.  Ugh.  I hate plumbing.  Not the way Indy hates snakes, but close.  But there was beer to be had, and I’m a sucker for beer.

“OK,” I said.  ”What do you need me to do?”

Three hours and many banged knuckles, swear words and empty beer bottles later, we called it a night.  There was still no water supply to the ice-maker, but there was a hell of a mess in the kitchen.   We capped off the line, threw all the tools and implements of destruction into an empty laundry basket, tossed the basket in the garage and called it a night.

This is why I hate plumbing.  It’s the same way I feel about writing HTML code and data entry:  I can do it, but I don’t love it.  And because I don’t love it, I’ll never be really good at it.  My skills as a writer and marketer and sales professional will always continue to improve because I love those activities and spend a lot of time doing them.  My skills as a plumber and data entry clerk and writer of code will stay static or diminish because I do everything I can to avoid getting involved in those activities.

There are those who could have done in 15 minutes the job that took me and my brother 7 man hours to complete.  They are the ones who love plumbing enough to be really good at it.  I guess that’s the lesson in all this: if you want to be really good at something, pick something that you love to do.

It sounds really simple, I know, but not a lot of people take the lesson to heart.  Instead, they choose a business or a career based on what others think.  They don’t trust their hearts, and they pay the price.  It’s why Henry David Thoreau said that most men lead “lives of quiet desperation”.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ask yourself: am I doing what I love?  Or did I fall victim to one of the classic blunders?

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Just a quick note to say that there’s still time to suggest a moral for last week’s Social Media Fable.  I’ll be picking a winner on Friday, so be sure to check back then to see which moral wins.

Also, be sure to order your copy of “Sociable!” by Shane Gibson and Steven Jagger.  It was released today.  I wrote a review about it a few weeks ago.  You can read that review here.  It’s a great book, and a must-read if you want to incorporate social media into your business.