In Search of Excellence

I recently came across a beautiful poem, ‘Two Tramps In Mud Time’ by Robert Frost.

Here are a few lines from that poem: 

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes
———- 

Sitting in my office, staring at my monitor at well past bed time, fighting to meet a deadline, I have wondered many times, “Am I enjoying this? how did I end up in this line of work? Why me? Why?

Yes, I have wondered. I bet you that I am not the only one. I am sure just like me, you have also fantasized about being a painter (replace your dream profession here), working on a masterpiece, locked in a room for days with no sense of time.

Common admit it..

Ok, now that we are on the same page.. let’s talk about ‘Enjoying work you get paid for’.

There are a few people (ok.. really really small population) who knew early on what they enjoy doing and are working in a career of their liking. Good for them.. Most, if not all of us don’t belong to this category, so let’s move on…

Then there are some people, again a small population, who did not start with a career of their liking but who now immensely enjoy the work they do. Again, most of us don’t belong here as well, so let’s move on…

Ok.. let’s talk about the rest of us now. How did we end up here? Some of us were influenced by our family, friends and the social pressure. Think 10′th and 12′th standard and you will know what I am saying. We were all supposed to go to medical college or engineering college (I won’t talk about the sub-caste system, you know.. IIT, then government, then paid seat.. ok.. ok.. I will stop.. painful memories..). If we were not ‘Good Enough’ for admission to medical or engineering colleges, then we were asked to go to commerce. You get the picture.. if not commerce then arts etc..

How many of us pursued our dream careers? Ohh. I know the standard answers..”I came from a poor family and I had to first make sure that I get into a career that pays me well”. “It was my grandmother’s dream that I become a doctor”. Before you blame everyone else, please answer this question, “Did you feel passionate about a particular profession?” I thought so.. I don’t think we had enough self-awareness and maturity to have a clarity and focus to know what we wanted to do.

Now, our education system and Indian mindset may be responsible for this but that’s not relevant for this article as it doesn’t help our current situation.  :-(

Our work puts bread on the table and we have to do it. But since we don’t really enjoy it, it doesn’t provide us job satisfaction. Can we at this time drop everything and pursue our ‘dream’ profession? The answer for most of us is “No”. We may not have enough financial stability, we may not have enough time because our family needs us, and in most cases we may not have enough grey cells left to train ourselves for a new career. We may have a ‘dream profession’ but it doesn’t mean we have the talent or resources to make a switch.

I am not helping am I? Ok.. so is there no hope for us? Is there a way to enjoy our line of work?

Yes there is.. The key is in our attitude and the way we look at our job. No.. don’t run away yet. I am not toeing the useless management line.. “Just learn to enjoy your work.”. I am presenting a different approach.

Unite your dream job (avocation) and your current job (vocation)

We view the professions as distinct compartments that have nothing in common. Nothing is further from the truth. Let’s take my profession. I am a Senior Manager at MindTree Consulting. I truly enjoy writing, sketching, painting, playing sports, traveling etc.

Now, if I can do things I enjoy at work I will start enjoying my job. Simple? Ok.. not so simple.. but not so difficult either. All I need to do is look at each of my interests and see if I can use them at work.

Take writing. I write numerous emails every day, I write comments in performance reviews, I write design documents, I even write articles for MindTree’s intranet portal. Writing that authors and novelists do when they write books and short stories is not really different. Books have a purpose, a storyline, and characters. So do my design documents and emails.

Ok, now lets take sketching and painting. Is sketching a portrait or a landscape really different than the architectural diagrams, doodling when taking notes, drawing on a whiteboard in a meeting?

Ok you may say that this is too simplistic and will not hold when I will compare 2 professions really different from one another. Lets try..

Lets say you wanted to be a doctor but are stuck in the software industry. Ask yourself why did you really want to be a doctor? what does a doctor do? Ok. So you wanted to help people. You wanted to treat people and make them better. Or you wanted to find new treatments. All right. Doctors need to be good listeners. Doctors must be good at asking the right questions to reach correct diagnosis. Doctors must be good at giving comfort. Doctors must be good problem solvers. We in the software industry face similar issues every day. We solve production problems. When an application/website is down we find the root cause and fix it. We interact with users who need help (I know…some of them are really sick..  ). We have to ask the right questions to figure out what exactly do they need. If they are screaming, crying we have to show compassion and give them comfort.. Right?

You see it is all in the lens we use to look at the world. What we love doing is applicable in one way or another in every profession. We just don’t realize it. When we unite work we enjoy with the work we do for a living, we get true job satisfaction.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

A short guide to the poem: The narrator who is affluent is chopping wood for fun. Two tramps want to do his job for money and that becomes a conflict. There is both pride and enjoyment in how he was doing the job. Watch for the description that conveys how he is enjoying the task. I could not understand the last 2 lines. So if anyone can provide some explanation I would really appreciate it.

Robert Frost – Two Tramps In Mud Time

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay

And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right–agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes