Not Showing Off...Not Falling Behind

A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Literally. I'm carrying no school books in my bag to work. Ahh...feels good. Anyway, so I guess I should post something.

I used to think that the harder you try, the more you get out of life. I don't think that's necessarily always the case. If you're good at something, there will always be someone else trying to leech off of your hard work. The gnats will always be most attracted to the sweetest fruits...

When I started my professional career, my boss and coworkers kept repeating the phrase "Not showing off, not falling behind". At the time I thought it was a little ridiculous but it'll be 5 years since I've been with my company and I am now a firm believer in the phrase. I spent the first half of my career busting my ass and trying to show off. My reward for this behavior was more work. I get the logic, if you're efficient at something, why not maximize the amount of work you do? Well, this logic is flawed because just like a sweet piece of fruit, you will attract all of the gnats until your body lay eaten and useless. Managers don't realize that maximizing their workers too much will eventually lead to demotivation from feeling overwhelmed and from not receiving reciprocal benefits. So before I ended up a devoured pit of a peach, I decided to tone my skills down. Now because of my decision to slack off, I'm less stressed and able to focus on just a few projects at a time. It seems like everyone else follows suit as well. If I need a column added to a database view, it takes a month. This is a task that literally takes 2 minutes but I know the "developers" on the other end are in the same boat as me so I understand. Sure there are the necessary hoops and red tape to go through but still a month seems crazy for this kind of change. But I don't stress. I just tell everyone a project is on hold until that change is made. I wonder how much money businesses would save if they actually valued their efficient people and didn't try to "maximize" the output of their skills. Whatever happened to quality not quantity?

Well it seems like my slacking off has paid off. I received an award yesterday and will get a check for $300 for the 5 minutes of work I did on a project. Granted this was a team award and it wouldn't be right for me to not be included but I doubt I would have received an award like this if I really did fully exemplify "excellence". In conclusion, don't show off in life. I guess Office Space is a very sad reality.