This blog is inspired by the Max Brook’s book, World War
Z. In this book at one point it details
how America has to go into a state of Total War and in the process, first
generation Americans who have more craft based trades, and a lifestyle where
they try to extend the life of every luxury they own are far more valuable
wartime skills then the skills that executives or paper pushers have in living life. The book goes on to detail how the paper
pushers start to own the work of the new manual labor jobs the government
thrusts upon them and that they find the new war time jobs far more emotionally
satisfying then their previous jobs where the skill sets were emails, contracts
and telephone calls, and paying a plumber to fix their toilets.
This struck a cord with me. A cord the reverberated within me so much that I was stricken restless in my bed unable to sleep for a long while. I considered just getting up and spilling this cord onto here, my blog, but chose not to as I get so little sleep at camp anyway. So it is a week later that I am not pounding this one out.
The cord that it struck was a very personal one. I am more or less a paper pusher and on that
particular day I was focused on a task of logistically figuring out how to move
our company's couple hundred night shift to a new camp, while solving bag
transfers, transportation and all other details that would make it go smooth. Of course, despite high hopes and all the planning in the world it didn’t go
smooth and every day I would have new problems come to me that are my
responsibility but not in any way my fault.
That is a big part of my job. The
other part is completing paper work. Now
I say completing but that is a lie. I
revise the same paper work on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Be it reports,
or forecasts or gathering information that aides my managers but really that is
the sum of my job at work and although it is critical to the job itself, it is
very emotionally unsatisfying on a regular basis which can be frustrating.
This brings me to my next point. When I have time off, I am seldom
relaxing. I develop projects when I am
at work that I execute when I get home.
Gardening, organization, home improvements, automotive work and a
plethora of hobbies that make a list so long I care not to mention that occupy
so much of my time when I am home. I
will have people ask me why I don’t just kick back and see friends, or play
video games or do anything to relax and for the longest while I didn’t have the
best answer. I would always say that I
like being busy. I like to work hard. Part of that is a lie. I do my work job but I don’t love it, but when I
am home I love what I do and that is because of this concept of emotional
satisfaction in what I do. I never made
that connection before but I am always so proud of the things I do when I am
home, even if it is simply mowing the lawn in straight lines, or hanging
pictures or rebuilding a room. The only
time I am proud of my job at work is when I manage to burn through a bunch of
it at a rate that impresses myself.
Which is sad.
It gave me an idea though, but it is not my idea, it is one I heard on Extra Credits, a video blog on Penny Arcade. It is an idea called GAMIFICATION. This is an idea where you take principles that make playing a video game interesting and applying it to life in a very real way. Please go to the links below they explain their idea way better than I can paraphrase and perverse it to meet my needs at work.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education
Now imagine this, every task you do is mapped out to a
certain number of (for simplicity sake) experience points that are earned upon
completion of that tasks. So take for
example if you do an activity daily, like say a Daily Report. When you complete that report you get XP for
completing it, you earn points. For
fairness lets say that each different task is weighted based on complexity or
the amount of time it takes to do so ideally you can hit out the same amount of points per day. This would
also make workers want to find ways to be more efficient at their tasks to earn
more points in less time, so there is some incentive there. You can challenge yourself to beat your own
scores, or to grind. It gives you
something to say that at the end of the day yes you achieved something, even if
all it was the same shit you would be doing anyway but now it is more
satisfying because you get some points from. It is a bit like wearing a
pedometer all day. If you hit your
target you feel accomplished. If you
exceed your goal it feels good. Or if
you miss it, you think of why and how to improve tomorrow. And with a pedometer all it is is
walking. Something that you have to do
on a daily basis, but once you measure it and are aware of it can be a more satisfying
activity.
You can also show your bosses how much work you actually do,
so your value is known. I am not saying
that you should have a minimum threshold as to what people you keep or not but
use it to level people up when it is time to give them a raise. In writing this it would be a much better
tool for self evaluation then to have your bosses own but still I think the
idea of gamifying work could be a powerful tool to help people like me who push
paper feel a bit more emotionally satisfied with their work by feeling like
they actually accomplish something and are not just revising the same reports.
