The work we want
There’s the work that you’re good at. Then there’s the work that you love. In a world that is fair and beautiful, the Venn diagrams of these two categories of work complete a perfect circle.
Alas, we do not live in that world.
Technology and life with Eyvonne Sharp
There’s the work that you’re good at. Then there’s the work that you love. In a world that is fair and beautiful, the Venn diagrams of these two categories of work complete a perfect circle.
Alas, we do not live in that world.
What do our values have to do with our day jobs? It’s a good and important question. When we understand and lean into our values we’re more energized in our work. Our boundaries give us built-in guardrails to help us define the work that matters most.
Over the past several years, my career has undergone a metamorphosis. In the early days, I was convinced that my best contributions to work would be learning to solve hard problems, making things work, being helpful and understanding the systems everyone needed to do their jobs, making them better, and solving technical puzzles. I built an identity around solving problems, around understanding technology, around filling gaps in capabilities and knowledge and finding ways to make myself valuable. In many ways, I still do these things, but it manifests differently now.
It started when we had COVID. It was October 2020, and I was tired of all the moving. As the pandemic disrupted the entire world in early 2020, our home was no exception. Our two college-aged kids came home for spring break and didn’t go back to campus. Our elementary-aged son and daughter were growingRead More
A few weeks ago, I was part of a lively team meeting. We were discussing mission and purpose and trying to put words around our place in the world. Nearly everyone had an opinion, and they shared it. It was the wonderful kind of spirited conversation that happens when intelligence, passion, and snark collide on the other side of an open-ended question.