Executing my soup program with excellence
This past weekend I encountered the following sales pitch for an industrial food service product: “are you ready to execute your soup program with excellence?”
Corporatese hilarity set momentarily aside, I derived inexplicable comfort from the vision of a mythical fast food franchise owner—ardent and passionate about every aspect of his business—who, reeling with the possibilities of this product, would engage and debate the salesman with wide eyes. Who might share his discovery with his friends (naturally: a set comprised mostly of fellow franchise owners), zealously contending the relative merits of competing industrial soup products.
I don’t know if this owner exists, but even entry-level employees in my industry (software engineering) often behave like him. I suspect that’s due to—for better or for worse—the exaltation of purpose in one’s occupation: aspiring to do something objectively important, meaningful, or good during business hours.
I remind myself often how absurdly, outlandishly fortunate I am to have chosen an occupation with a supply–demand curve that makes purpose a conceivable job amenity. If I’d chosen another path, I’d be forced to spend those eight hours a day with utter personal indifference to my success or failure.
This celebration of purpose, though, comes with cost: if I think my work Matters with a capital ‘M,’ I’ve tied my self-esteem, temperament, psychic wellness to that undertaking. My day-time struggle with a nasty problem will seamlessly transition into detached night-time conversation, my frustrated, churning mind still back at my gray plastic desk under fluorescent light.
I now suspect the real danger is in a false sense of purpose: in accepting its bleed into after-hours mentally and physically, yoking it to consummate responsibility, equating personal success with the project’s success—all while the work itself does not tally the imagined objective import, meaning, or good.
Sometimes this behavior is easy to spot. I worry about new college graduates choosing a first apartment a block away from work for a convenient commute. I’m self-aware enough to sharply change course when all my conversations somehow return to software. But unstated attitudes and priorities are harder to catch.
Having worked twenty-seven of the last thirty days, I’ve found I needed this brisk reminder: to attribute only as much meaning and intrapersonal attention to my work as to balance the purpose it delivers.
