BE A LITTLE UNRELIABLE - Brittlestar’s Weekly Newsletter - Issue #19
It’s the end of May. How? Someone explain.
BE A LITTLE UNRELIABLE
I’ve been an employee and an employer.
One of the things I’ve learned from both of those perspectives is that things will not change if there is no perceived problem. Truly, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
As an employer, that’s a pretty tempting spell to fall under. If the end results are as they should be, there’s no problem right?
Well, kinda.
Sometimes accepting the flow means ignoring small problems that are building day by day into bigger problems… until one day the flow just stops and you have to figure out how to start it again.
As an employee, it means making things happen and damn the personal cost. It’s often mistaken for taking pride in your work. You want to do well. Over deliver. So you end up doing more work than you’re paid for. You end up doing more tasks than you were expected to do. You end up giving up too much of yourself just to keep things going for someone else.
That’s the kind of thing I mentioned that builds up day by day and one day becomes a big problem for the employer.
However, that’s also the kind of thing that is a problem from day one for the employee. It’s a constant point of unspoken annoyance (sometimes spoken but never to the people that can change things). That isn’t healthy and, despite seemingly keeping things going, ends up disrupting things far more than they would have been to pause and fix it.
As someone who is self-employed, I’ve fallen victim to this constantly. When Shannon, my wife, was a hotel housekeeper, she fell victim to it by covering the gaps left by her supervisor’s many cigarette breaks.
It doesn’t just happen in work.
It happens in any organization or collectives… including families and other relationships.
There are gaps that are filled by those who just want to keep things going… until one day they can’t do it anymore.
An assertive and confident person would tell you to just speak up and let those that need to know that things need to change… but that’s just what an assertive and self-confident person would say isn’t it?
I’ve got a massive ego but not that much bravado. So, I’ve learned to be a little bit unreliable some times.
I don’t mean breaking promises. No. If you say you can do something, you do it.
I mean, I learned to try to put my own well-being first when asked or expected to do things.
I feel this makes me slightly unreliable in the best possible way.
The line in which I become unreliable is constantly shifting. Some days I can go above and beyond without issue. Some days I can’t.
My unreliability has provided me with a buffer that, so far, has kept me healthy and not hating everyone and everything.
Some may call this simply ‘being honest with yourself’, but ‘a little unreliable’ sounds way cooler.
###
A little unreliable me in Grade 13... just attended long enough for this pic