Category: Blog

The title is misleading, I’m not talking about self-help, but more of a business oriented application of the “Don’t be scared of changing” rule.

Right now with my company we’re finding some issues with our shipment partner. Not easy to integrate with, some orders are a mess, so all in all, there’s something missing.

At first I wanted to stay with them, to fix all the issues and so on, but then I remember about our labels.
Yes, the labels we stick onto the packaging. We first printed them in a local shop, great quality, high price.
It took them months to find an alternative, and we found it, better price and even better quality.

Sadly the quality declined after a couple of months, which led us to find another company.

It’s ok to change. Even though some relationships with the people you meet along the way might be worth keeping, it’s still ok to change. 
Because change allow you to move faster if you make the right decisions.

The key is always to change when you’re not happy with something and you can’t find a viable solution, that will always work out good.

One thing I’m quite sure of is that we’re not all created equals, we have different goals, and often our skills are defined by our talent, or what we decide to follow as our main passion.

Thus it’s normal to see that after a few decades in this world, the outcomes and the personalities of each person are quite different.

In my job it as a web developer I happen to see some ind of people. From the slow learner, to the fast learner, from the slow performing to the fast performing, from the lazy to the active, and from the empathic to the non-empatic.

These are simply labels, tags as you might call them, a mix of the can be easily found in each one of us.
I think that we tend too associate one tag to a win-all situation, while in fact what happens in real life is that some people might be great performers even if they’re slow. It’s all about the context and the setup.

One thing though, that I like to imagine like “one of the best assets” is the ability to understand pressure. Know when it’s fine, know what are the stakes and push it if needed.

It’s a borderline that cannot be easily defined, and the reason why is that we might include too much things into the important “do it now” tasks, rarely though they’re that much.

At the end of the day it’s all about using or wasting time.
The right priorities make the good player, not only the skills or label.

Given that, everyone can be a good performer.

You had an idea that seemed good, you followed your instincts and decided to build a product, make it out of nothing.

You refined that idea, till you put it on the market and one person doesn’t like it.

It might be the start of a more expanded opinion, or it might be a single opinion in the crowd, it’s hard to say.

So why even worry until you understand how real is that opinion?

I have a friend that’s really stressed, overwhelmed.
Today I asked where does his stress comes from.

I would expect to be a boss that is too hard on him, or maybe too much work, but after some time listening to the possible answers I realized: Stress is part of our inner narrative.

Yes, there are times when this can be justified, but it always start with that.
A story in our head.

What is the purpose of work? Is it to improve lifes, to make a change? To pay the bills?
I’d say the last, although when work can be more it’s absolutely beneficial.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. It’s ok if work is boring as long as it pays the bills.
We often forget it, because now we feel entitled to do extremely good work, but all the world is sustained upon boring work. In fact, it’s thanks to the boring works that some fields of expertise can experiment and be creative. Without the boring part, it wouldn’t be possible.

It’s a chain, and not always we’re lucky enough to be in the part of the chain that’s interesting. More often than not we end up doing boring, repeating, work. But without us the entire chain would make no sense.

I once felt entitled to do only interesting work, and felt like a slave when I was doing boring work.
I realized (maybe a little bit too late), that it was selfish, and I embraced the fact that, although I have powers and control over what work I do, doing boring work is still a great thing to do, because fixing bugs will still be a key role in each project.

I never regret this change, because now I have more chances than ever to not do boring work, and when I do (and I do it often) the boring part, it’s always a pleasure and a joy to do it, because I realize that I can enjoy the creative work thanks to that.