I’ve been in my job 20+ years. Tho I’ve always been one of the top producers and am near the top in seniority, I’ve never played the office politics/self promotion game. Over the last couple of years I saw a couple of opportunities for promotions/advancement, so I tried to work the politics and promote the work I’d done. End result is I got slapped down in a pretty big way.
So I figured, “What the fuck!” Assumed I’d never get a promotion or anything, but realized where I was at was a pretty good place to be. So I decided to simply concentrate on appearances and avoiding anything that could lead to criticism, while figuring the quality and quantity of my work could go to hell (or at least sink down to my office’s average.)
You can guess at the punchline - since I don’t give a shit, I’ve been falling assbackwards into gravy. I’m getting ridiculous amounts of praise for the most meaningless accomplishments. I’ve managed to volunteer my way onto a couple of “workgroups” that are in reality worthless, but garner grossly disproportionate praise for simply attending the occasional pointless meeting and staying awake.
On the one hand, it could be frustrating, since the positive feedback I’m getting has little or nothing to do with what I consider the significance or quality of my work product. But on the other hand, work is easier than ever, and every official compliment or pat on the back I get gives me another couple of years I can fly under the radar on my way to a comfortable retirement.
So - any of you have stories about when your hard work met a brick wall, only to achieve success when you stopped trying?
I think dating is the most obvious one. Whenever I’m “looking” for a partner, there’s nary an ass to be found (or any other bits, for that matter). When I just give it up and decide to mellow, I’m suddenly faced with all sorts of suitors. I don’t THINK I come off as desperate, but something more than coincidence is going on there.
We were banging our collective heads against a wall trying to get my son to do his homework in sixth grade. Checking his assignment book, sitting next to him as he did the work, putting it in his binder for him, getting extra time and resources for projects, checking for missing things with his teachers - it was exhausting. Even with all that, he’d get to class and not turn it in! The completed assignment would still be in his binder when he got home! Finally I stopped. Just…stopped. Told him his homework was his job and I’d help him out whenever he asked, but I was no longer micromanaging the process. If he failed, he’s just have to repeat sixth grade, but I wasn’t accepting that failure meant anything about me as a parent - it’s about him as a student. Little shit got four failing grades up to A’s in two weeks after that.
Whenever I have a problem that doesn’t require immediate attention (i.e. nothing is on fire and nobody is bleeding) I will wait twenty-four hours. Often the problem goes away, or a workable solution comes to me.
Quit squeezing into the old stuff (or thinking “I’ll be able to wear that when…”), get rid of the things you can’t wear, and go out and buy clothes that fit comfortably.
Maybe everybody else also realizes that you don’t give a shit–and therefor you are no longer a threat to the system? When you were competing for their jobs, they didn’t praise you,because nobody wanted to upset the cart of the existing politics. So you tried to play the game, promote yourself—and got shot down. Now that you’re down, and intend to stay there, feel free to volunteer as much as you want–they’ll be happy to keep paying you at your current salary for doing 10% more work than anybody else.
(gee, can you detect a some bitterness from a fellow non-promotee? Misery loves company, etc…) But it really is worth it-- good job security, and lower blood pressure at the same time.
Well perhaps not as profound as some of the other examples listed above, I find this maxim applies true to videogames. If I’m desperately struggling to beat a certain level in, let’s say, Donkey Kong 2, then I’m probably going to die a million times. If I relax and let The Force flow, then it becomes amazingly easy sometimes.
Fire spinning is like that. When I’m trying hard to impress people, I whack myself in the head without fail. When I’m just chilling and get into the Zen Zone, I can do amazing things.
Learning a foreign language can be a bit like this.
Living in a foreign country you are constantly learning, etc, and it can be a bit straining. I find that if you go away or to someplace where they speak your language for a while for a few weeks, and come back you are surprisingly better. It’s like your brain needs a moment to solidify the knowledge without constant bombardment of new info.
Personally, I’ve discovered that things improve when I stop trying to do the job that my boss and various administrators think I should be doing, and just do the job as I feel it needs to be done. Suddenly, I’m a guru and a genius and The Person Who Must Be Consulted. Which carries its own set of problems.
Of course, if the bureaucracy is too rigid, one can get slaughtered doing it that way. But my position is critical enough and hard enough to fill that my boss will generally support me against the bureaucracy.
So while I can’t advocate that approach for everyone, it sure has worked well for me.
Golf and other mental games. Last time we went out a friend of mine hit into a tree, couldn’t find it. Took the penalty, hit the same tree again. Said what the hell, if I don’t make this one well I’ll just pick it up and take the 10 - hit the most gorgeous shot right onto the green. Because he didn’t care, of course.
Hubby used to laugh at me because I’d have to sing to distract myself, to do well on the hard parts of video games.
And my contribution: knowing what the right decision is. I can ponder a choice, discuss, debate, compare points, and yet somehow if I stop with all that, I realize I know the right answer, and always did.
I can relate to this concept with regards to my mental health. I have very serious chronic depression and anxiety issues, but I have found that the more I just say, ‘‘Oh, screw it’’ and accept that I have depression and anxiety issues, the happier I will be. I have learned to be happy while depressed and calm while panicked. Currently I am all four of those things at once. And I am very, very content.
Sometimes accepting the inevitable is better than banging your head against a brick wall a million times. Just relaxing, being calm and mindful, and staying fixed in the present moment does wonders. I can’t change the biology of my brain at will–but I can change my attitude about the whole deal. I’ve been with me long enough to know myself well–the bassackward neurotic thoughts that torment me are no longer surprising or taken as seriously as they used to be. I’m fucking insane and very happy that way, and not really worried about it anymore. There’s nothing I can do but live my best life.
As one fucking insane person to another, I cant say I agree with your entire philosophy, but I’m glad you’re coping well. When life gives you lemons, you make a lemon meringue pie and chuck it right at life’s face! That’s what I say anyway.
Ballsy approach. Risky, but ballsy. Related point: feedback is overrated. With some bosses, requests for feedback is a mistake. They continuously suggest time wasting changes concerning minor points, thus driving you nuts. Solution: withhold details until deadline, when they’ll decide it’s too late to change things. Possible problem: you might get stuck pulling an all-nighter or an all-weekender if they decide it really is worth the trouble to change. But it’s still a good strategy.
And on that note, when you start trying to lose weight, get rid of the notion that you can’t skip a scheduled workout ever, or if you have that donut or a slice of your daughter’s birthday cake, you’re going to DIE next week without ever losing an ounce.
You can’t go into a weight-loss routine trying to match Ken Shamrock’s hardcore attitude and expect to last for more than a month or two. That simply doesn’t work for normal people. Losing weight requires you to just relax, feel the force, and take the serenity prayer to heart until you start losing pounds.
Well, I am not a therapist, but I think it might be dangerous to just accept the fact that you’re having neurotic thoughts and whatever else you may have going on upstairs. I understand your point that relaxing is better than stressing out over it, but surely there is a happy medium between blase and panic?
Golf is it for me. When I decided to take up golf a few years ago, I spent a lot of time at the driving range. I had played a few times in my teens, so I was familiar with the concepts, but it had been many years. Still, I tried to remember all that I ever knew: foot position, head down, grip, and so on. And I spent hour upon hour spraying balls all over the driving range. If one went where I wanted it to, it was by complete accident.
One day, absolutely frustrated, and having a half-a-bucket of balls left, I just stopped trying. I decided to hit the last balls in the bucket though. So I teed up, not caring about anything except getting rid of those @#$% golf balls.
To my surprise, I swung right through the ball. It flew straight and true, 250 yards downrange. I did it again. And again. And I found that I could do it as often as I liked, as long as I did not care about the small stuff. Relax, enjoy the movement of the swing, and don’t try so hard.
I’m not a great golfer. But after that, I went and played on a real course a number of times. I got to the point where I could hold my own with any weekend duffer, and I got a lot of compliments on my swing. The best one was, “Your swing looks so natural.” Yes, because I had stopped trying to force it into something that turned out to be, to me, unnatural!
I was with a friend yesterday at the music store looking for a birthday gift. We had a particular compact disc in mind, the motion picture soundtrack to “Pan’s Labyrinth.” We went through the entire P section and didn’t find it. We asked the clerk; the computer says there should be one copy in the store. We went through the P’s again, and didn’t find it again.
My friend: “Oh well, must be mis-filed, or somebody’s carrying it around, or the computer’s wrong. I guess we should think of something else…”
Me: “There it is.”
Pointing to a different section a couple of slots further down. “Pan’s Labyrinth” was a couple of disks from the beginning of the Rs.
Him: “How did you see that?”
Me: “I stopped looking.”
I was only partly being a smartass, too. When I let go of the search, my field of view widened considerably, and I sort of took in the whole soundtrack display. “Pan’s Labyrinth” basically just jumped out at me.
Hardly as earth-shaking as some of the other stories here, but it still fits.
I do editorial work, and although I give all the pieces I read a real thorough initial going-over, there are a lot of errors you just can’t see if you’re looking for them. I have to practically turn off my brain if I want to find anything in the final check. My boss asked me once how I manage to find so many nit-picky errors, and I told her “I quit trying.” She thought I was kidding.
