Four Professional Lessons Learned from an Old Pickup

I had just finished rebuilding a close friend's backyard. Laid down rock, built a deck, leveled land; overall all, lots of work. The payment - an old Chevy Silverado that he no longer used.

I knew of the immediate flaws: needed tires, expired license plate, broken dashboard, peeling paint. Regardless of its flaws, it instantly became my pride and joy. I, finally, owned a pickup!

I got to work right away in getting this truck up to speed. Replaced the tires, registered the vehicle, learned how to restore paint, and saturated my brain with all things electrical in order to get my odometer to work. It was a significant amount of work, yet a pleasure to do it. Queue lesson 1:

I can be excited about a situation, process, or opportunity yet still see it's flaws.

I would go so far as to say it's important to see the flaws in professional situations while your excitement for them is still high. This gives one the energy to tackle early the stumbling blocks that may prevent progress down the road. Without recognizing these issues early on, they are likely to creep in later to drop your enthusiasm for something you once held in high esteem. In my case, I knew this Silverado needed work right away, but recognizing this didn't demean the value or it's potential. I was fortunate to see the pickup for what it could be with some effort, rather than dismissing it for what it is in that precise moment.

With a new team, a new job, or a new project, we can quickly identify the immediate flaws and use the energy we initially have to make it ideal. Just like my pickup, working on these issues early will have an air of pleasure rather than work. Though things go wrong down the road, we can knockout many issues while our drive to fix them is still high.

I can do what I love while still disliking some aspects of it - this does not mean I don't love it!

Let me explain. I loved my pickup. I loved working on it. I loved seeing it perform well and the feeling I got when I rolled the window to feel the wind and put my arm around my girlfriend that was able to scoot right next to me (bench seats). That said, I hated the gas mileage. I also hated the color, the amount of money I needed to drop on a new dashboard and water pump (more on this later). Most of all, I hated that so many people thought that because I had an old pickup, I didn't mind if they put a scratch or dent on it while they used it to move some Ikea furniture or run into a fire hydrant (you know who you are!). However, at the end of the day, the pride I felt seeing that truck parked in my stall was far greater than the any of the things that drove me crazy about owning it.

The same is true in any professional setting. We are not required to like all aspects of the things we love. Our dream careers can occasionally be nightmares, and our perfect jobs can very often be full of flaws. This does not mean we don't love it. Take courage and understand that if at the end of a horrible work day you can still confident say, "I am proud to be a [insert job title here]!" or, "I love working for [insert company or team here]!", you're in a great place.

Be prepared to put in the work.

Things break. In physics we learn that entropy is always increasing in the universe and things eventually fall apart. In order to keep things together, we need to put in the required amount of energy. As mentioned above, eventually the water pump on my truck broke, the dashboard issue, that I thought was a simple electrical fix, turned out to be more systemic and my A/C, radio, temperature and oil gauge all stopped working. There were an insane amount of things I needed to do to keep that pickup up to speed and make sure it passed the required emissions tests every two years (California). I had two options every time that check engine light came on: recognize that this might be the end of the road for this pickup, or put in the work to fix it.

We can apply this principle in our professional lives in the following ways:

• Recognize that things will go wrong (sometimes often).
• Try to catch problems early before they become larger ones.
• Compare the value of the work you put in, to the overall value output by the particular team, product, or project you are working with.

Given that hindsight is often 20/20, we can see in retrospect that many of the disappointing professional experiences we have experienced could've been fixed with simple things like training, communication, a simple word of gratitude or kindness, or an apology. These little efforts can sometime add up to a significant amount of day-to-day work to maintain an ideal professional environment, but we need to be willing to put in that work.

Finally,

Try not to forget what you learned and always do you best to apply.

All things end. I eventually gave that truck away to my brother. Though it hurt, I knew that my time was done and I had that Chevy long enough. Even though I no longer need to worry about making sure I keep up with the maintenance, I learned a few things that I have taken with me and applied to my new car. I need to keep regular oil changes, make sure the coolant is filled, respond quickly to that check engine light. I also learned the signs that something might wrong before it became a real problem. I can maintain the heck out of that new car!

In a similar fashion, every professional experience gives us just that - experience. It would be a terrible waste if just because a job or project ended, we didn't take that knowledge with us to the next. Every new assignment and every new professional opportunity is an opportunity to start again with added insight and perspective. What things will you look out for in this new assignment? How will you prevent issues that caused headaches in previous projects? Where will you apply the things that worked with your previous team? When will you tell a colleague that you appreciate them and their efforts? Hopefully, as we grow in experience, the answers to these questions become easier to answer and more part of our nature by taking what we've learned and applying it to new situations.

Though it eventually came to an end, I am grateful for the lessons I learned from that old pickup.