The Biggest Loser: Wasted Time & Wasted Potential

I’ve been to Canada a few times already this year. As a requirement to return to the USA, you have to go get a covid test. I have used the same service for the last 3 times now and always get the same nurse every time. She seems so unhappy and embittered to be there. I understand it when people hate their jobs. But to be so open about it. I have never understood this. 

Maybe it’s also my perspective that everyone should be more like the Japanese. In whatever you do, you do your best. Whatever the work is, no matter how small or low status it is, it is always treated with honor and with a focus on doing it well.

You are a highly skilled individual, in an industry where your role is in high demand. If you hate the place or occupation so much, go do something different. No one is putting a gun to your head. Yet they keep showing up and spending a big part of their life here at work. And it’s probably all due to the time honored “devil they know, then the one they don’t” aspect of people. Without knowing all the circumstances here it just seems like incredible laziness. I don’t mean for this to sound as judgemental as it is: but what a waste. 

Growing up in Canada in the early days, it was tough. While we never starved, we didn’t always have resources, so we just got by. We always watched the budget and never threw away food unless it was really bad. As things got better as my parents' careers and economic lives improved, the scarcity disappeared thankfully. But these habits became so ingrained that they still have not really left me. And in some cases have penetrated even further in my attitudes, especially in regards to money, time and energy. 

I viscerally hate waste. This was very helpful when it came to my business career in operations. Operations is the fine-tuning and optimization of everything. My personality naturally orients to this. Excess costs & people sitting around doing nothing is offensive to me. Yes, you need to have some excess capacity or else you will run your team and business into the ground. But the best businesses are able to keep a close balance of some redundancy with effectiveness. 

I think about this in relation to people all around us. People like that sad & somewhat angry nurse. All that time is spent unhappy. Time you cannot get back. You lose money, you can usually find a way to make it up. You literally can never get your time back. But more important, all that wasted potential. To do something that excites you, that challenges you and inspires you. Especially in your work life which equates to so much of your life. A life that literally is too short to waste. 

I wish I had the courage to strike out on my own earlier, so I truly do understand the fear and lack of confidence here. So learn from my mistakes and not your own. I believe that the sooner you can start your path to finding the right thing that sparks you, the better off you and the world will be.