Useless Work

One of the blogs I follow regularly is The Dilbert Blog, written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams. As a guy who spent many years in white collar work, his cartoons often hit home with my own experience and his blog posts do too. Take for instance this selection from today's offering:

Almost everything you do in your personal life is useful, even if it's just relaxing or spending time with your family. But if you have a white collar job, almost everything you do for your so-called work will end up being a waste of time in the long run. Obviously if you are a carpenter, most of your nails serve a good purpose. But white collar jobs are mostly about wasting time, with the hope that sometimes, rarely, something good will happen.

As a veteran of more than 30 years of white collar jobs I can vouch for the truth in that statement. The reality that what I was doing had little long-term effect or real significance hit home one day back in 1983.

I had just been promoted into a new position that came with an office and a couple of file cabinets full of work my predecessors had done. During a slow day I decided to go through the file cabinets to make some room for my stuff and see if there was anything in there I didn't need anymore. I pulled out file after file of detailed flow charts and policy proposals that must have taken the guy weeks or months to do. Stacks and stacks of paper, the product of his efforts over a period of a several years.

And all of it completely worthless to me.

I chucked the whole thing into several wastebaskets. By the time I was done there was no trace whatsoever that my predecessor had ever even worked there. Nothing against him, but none of that stuff had any meaning anymore. It had served to occupy his time and to his boss it probably justified his existence, but in terms of lasting effect, it was useless.

I never took myself too seriously at work ever again because I realized how temporary all that stuff was. And when some crisis would appear and people would start acting like what we were doing was so terribly important, I'd just laugh quietly to myself as they panicked because I'd already figured out that none of this would matter in a very short time.

In fact, everything I had done in 15 years with that bank disappeared when the bank was sold in 1995. It may have paid the bills for awhile, but in terms of anything really meaningful, it was useless.

Sorry to depress all you white collar workers. I guess the moral of this story is if you're looking to make a lasting impact on this world, you'll need to find it somewhere else than in your work. For me it's in 35 years of gospel music. And the music my kids will make. That will leave a greater legacy than any paper I pushed in some florescent-lit office somewhere.