“Me, me. I would like to work on this,” I put up my hand for the 3rd proposal coming my way that week.
I like variety at work, the opportunity to do more than what my KPIs ask me to. They keep me alive and help me think across diverse topics.
Isn’t it exciting, to learn something new, think of innovative ways of working, drive cutting edge products and businesses?
It is.
In fact, research (don’t ask for sources) shows that it is very important to constantly think and pivot to what will keep us relevant five or ten years down the line. The world changes so much and so frequently that the time to obsoletion is shrinking by the minute.
But, have you ever paused to consider whether you are the kind who runs behind the shiny new toy, like a kid in a never-ending Hamley’s maze?
Perhaps because it is interesting. Also perhaps because it is cooler to bring these up in conversations with the world.
When the question is, “What do you do?”, “I build next gen de-fi” has a certain flex to it that “I run operations for a bank” doesn’t.
But, is that the all there is to work? What about the good old here and now, driving BAU, meeting short term goals, keeping the show running? What about the KPIs we set out to achieve for the year, the next year, maybe even the year after next?
Where do we land if we take our eye off the ball because the golden star beckons from a distance.
I know I sound like a terrible oldie, but after years and years of the glossy and the dull, the shiny and the pedestrian, I have realised that work needs to be a mix of both.
It is as important to be steadfastly focused upon what drives value today, as it is to explore the next new thing.
For, after all, we have only 24 hours in a day, and not enough mind space to cater to all that glitters around us.
And, without prioritisation and rank ordering, what are we but a big blob of nothingness.
P. S. Views strictly personal. Post doesn’t refer to any organisation that I am currently associated with.