I Did Something Great, But What's Next

Since my employer has been in a hiring freeze in this climate, one of the areas of focus where I can still make a difference is around culture and team-building events. So for one event, I put in some extra elbow grease to make it an impressive experience.

Forgive me for not going into details - I don’t want to be discovered.

The good news is my work paid off - people loved it. They said it was one of the best activities they’ve done, and it must now be a staple as part of our team-building activities going forward. It involved some coding, some design, some creativity and some whimsy, and it came together. It felt very rewarding. I had multiple people say to me, “Wow - you put this together?!”, and so I thought to myself, surely, I’m safe from future layoffs. I want my name associated with team-building and a place where people want to work, and here’s one of the cool and unique things we do that I made happen.

But then a weekend occurs, and the Monday rolls around, and it’s back to work as usual. It’s easy to forget about the big event the previous week. I can’t fill up my every week with cool projects like that - I have other things I’m likely supposed to be doing.

I’m reminded of this Steve Jobs quote:

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.

So I wonder - what’s my next big thing? My one recent instance of Doing Something Great isn’t enough for me to rest until another bout of inspiration hits. I need a habit of doing things in great way so that I’m seen as consistently showing value. I need to a habit of doing it so that, if for some reason I am let go, it is second nature for me to bring that value to the next organization.

But going back to the grind - the things I’m actually hired to do - those things won’t be impactful; they won’t be great. That’s demotivating, so I need to find a way to work through it.