Quote

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing." - Thomas A. Edison

This was on the email signature of someone at our help desk. I think I may have posted another quote to myself that came from her email signature and so this is becoming a pattern.

Anyway, I have always loved to work. I think I officially started in the 4th grade when I got my first paper route, first babysitting job and first lawn to mow (Mrs. Thomas paid me $15! and I could complete the job in 1 hour each Saturday). I was quite the highly compensated little shy girl on Burrell Court. Luckily, there have been many jobs between then and now and it's a far greater feeling of accomplishment for me than my formal education. I guess it's because I see value in producing a product and not in answering questions on a test. As far as I'm concerned, tests measure if you are good at taking tests and work measures what was defined in the quote above.

An interesting phenomena I have at my current job is that there are people that are really good at appearing to accomplish work. I'm not talking about someone playing solitaire on their computer and then switching screens when their boss comes in the room. I'm talking about people who do expend a lot of busy-ness with talking, ideas, processes, and politics that lead to no solution.

I've demonstrated this phenomena to people by showing them to a row of various brochures that sit on a table in my office. The piles are neatly arranged and it's clear that each pile represents a different brochure. The "expend energy" busy person comes in and says there has "got to be a better way" (sometimes there is and that is followed by a "Big Idea" that makes millions - just ask Donny Deutsch) and starts re-arranging the stacks, piling them on top of each other, mixing them up, separating the ones that have bent corners, including them with a pile of adjacent business cards all while bringing other like minded people into the conversation to get their opinion about whether there should be any brochures in the first place. At this point the entire transaction will boil down to two possible solutions. One, they actually re-arrange the brochures somewhat to their original state and beam with pride that they resolved my issue. Or, more likely, they will look at their mess and say that we need to get more people involved and set up a big meeting for a later date so we can discuss the best way (and every exception to the rule) to resolve this mess we have gotten ourselves into with the brochure stacks.

Guess what happens then? This entire process leaves people like me in a numbed state and we can't even think after the transation. After all, all common sense has gone out the window and once that is gone we are in uncomfortable territory. The temporary self-doubt kicks in and the "Am I crazy?" question starts bouncing around the mind instead of the voice of reason.

Anyway, what was I originally talking about? Now I'm all messed up.