05.21.08
Self Replication, the objective for life and work.
With any situation, you can respond with fear or creativity. At work, you can use every opportunity to self-promote in an attempt to protect your job, or you can utilize the resources available to your position to learn and prosper. This article deals with the latter, in a hypothetical scenario.
Lets say, you have a given skill set, that you have worked at for some years, while you have certainly not reached a level of mastery, you are more than competent and able to teach others what you know. Instead of forcing you through the constant rote-regurgitation of your experience, your work has graciously lent you an assistant who is less skilled in the area of your expertise to help with your workload.
This is beneficial in two ways, one, it furthers the apprenticeship system, and two, it allows you the freedom to dive deeper into your craft, now that the lower-level tasks can be accomplished.
After a year of working with the expert, your apprentice has risen to the level where they could require an assistant of their own, and your previous workload can be taken on entirely by this person who used to be your assistant. Not that your job has become irrelevant, by any means. With your greater skillset, you can organize, strategize, advise, and provide all manner of higher-level services to your company. As well, your greater mastery increases your self-esteem, job-security and marketability. Wow, what a win-win situation!
It’s too bad that most jobs require 6 months to get acclimated to the situation, procedures and whatever skills need to be learned to do the work. Then, mind-numbing boredom ensues, necessitating some sort of sub-conscious betrayal/screw-up to shake things up, which adds a brief challenge to make things exciting for a little while, then slowly, boredom begins to take over again, repeating the cycle.
Everyone needs a rising bar of challenge to avoid this cycle of boredom and destruction. Not too much, as it gets overwhelming, but not too little, as that leads to the aforementioned boredom. Achieving this rising bar of challenge for yourself requires drive, perseverance, and cooperation from your situation. Best of luck.
