Creating Work
I recently watched a video titled “To succeed in any job you need to create work” and I couldn’t agree more, especially for those just starting their career.
My first job out of college was at a software company where I was a Marketing Associate. I started in this position literally one day after graduating college, so to say I was green is almost an understatement. Sure, I had completed plenty of internships while in college, but even though I worked really hard at those internships at most they were a 20 hour a week job and I had specific tasks assigned to me.
At this new job I had a short list of core responsibilities, and I would complete my daily tasks by lunch time each day. I would spend the rest of the day bored and I would often ask for more responsibility or more things to do.
I ultimately left this job because I wanted a position that would allow me to be more creative and that would offer more responsibility. Looking back I realize it wasn’t the company that needed to change it was me. Instead of sitting around waiting for more work, I would have been more successful creating my own projects. In fact, as I move along in my career I find that the best jobs out there offer this kind of opportunity. Unless you are a heart surgeon or some sort of stock broker there will be times in any job that you find yourself without a lot on your plate. Use this time as an opportunity to develop project that you find interesting and that will benefit the company in some way. Not only will you be more satisfied in your career, you’ll be seen someone with initiative and drive.
Some of my best ideas have come to me when I am sitting around at work with not much to do. Instead of checking Facebook surfing other sites, I try to “create work” for myself. I can honestly say it works, and it does impress your boss when you knock on their office door and say “I have an idea”. Of course you can’t just have the beginnings of an idea, you have to have a well thought out project with goals, objectives, benefits and a plan on how you will execute the project. Try creating work for yourself when you have little or nothing to do, and watch your career bloom. I’m also willing to bet that if your organization needs to “down size” at some point they are less likely to cut the person who comes up with creative and beneficial projects on their own.
What are your experiences with creating work for yourself?
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:32 PM
Google (GOOG) is great at asking employees to do exactly this. They expect Engineers to follow the 20 percent rule. In this rule they have to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing the projects that they are really passionate about — of course, they have to be related to what the company does.
Sometimes your career takes you where it wants to go. But if you really want to get to a particular situation in life, you have to take your career where you want it to go.
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One word of caution. You want to generate value… not necessarily ‘work’ — not all work generates value. I think in this article you probably referred to Value Generating Work.
You could just take a ream of paper and cut it in 1/4 inch stripes with a pair of scissors, one page at a time. That would consume countless hours of work, but generate no value. Or… you can make a 15 min phone call that initiates the change that saves or creates thousands of dollars to the company. It is not only about the hours worked — but about the value created. People get hired and/or promoted because they can provide more than $1 for every $1 spent on them (when you include salary, benefits, equipment, real estate, and support personnel).
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Voluntary value creation ideas could be a topic on which this blog could write many articles.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:19 AM
I totally agree with you, but one other thing I like to do on my “free time at work” is to improve my skills, as a photoshop artist and programmer, I like to work on those skills that then I create work using them and shine a bit more since those are skills that not everyone has in my line of work.
But overall, I guess staying away from “wasting time” should be a life philosophy. Life is too short to chill and look busy.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:36 PM
[...] I stated in an earlier post, I try to create new projects that will benefit the company when my work load gets low. However, in many of the [...]