Source: http://images-cdn01.associatedcontent.com/image/A3532/35326/300_35326.jpg

Sometimes, opportunities aren’t flushed down the toilet…maybe, opportunities are what is left over AFTER you flush. That’s crazy, isn’t it?

Drudge or Dread the day away. It happens and time drags. Someone–sorry, missed you when I had to restart the browser as Firefox updated to 3.0.x–highlighted Seth Godin’s recent entry about Get to vs have to. Seth writes:

How much of your day is spent doing things you have to do (as opposed to the things you get to do.) In my experience, as people become successful and happier (the subset that are both) I find that the percentage shifts. These folks end up spending more and more time on the get to tasks. You’d think that this happens because their success permits them to skip or delegate the have to tasks. And to some extent, this is true. But far more than that, these people redefine what they do all day. They view the tasks as opportunities instead of drudge work.

A simple redefinition transformed the quality of their day, and more important, the perception of their work.

I don’t know about you, but redefining some of what life throws at you as opportunities instead of drudge work is well…baloney. Isn’t it? Sure, it works some of the time, but at some point, all you are really doing is adjusting your own attitude, and there is an objective reality that you measure up against.

I’m always reminded of the story of the janitor whom everyone thought was wonderful, wise, and witty, self-fulfilled, but at the end of the day, he was still a janitor making a few dollars, someone who’d wasted their time in school and “failed” as we define success today–college graduate, uh, no. What external, objective reality did he use to assess his progress? When he’s scraping the toilet, is that a rewarding job? What opportunity is there in scrubbing the toilet clean, only to watch pre-teen boys mess it up again? We’ll come back to this question.

How is that choice one makes to choose how to assess one’s worth by an external measuring stick any different than viewing tasks as opportunities instead of drudge? I’m not sure, and hey, that’s why I’m writing this. To find out. I have to remind myself because I’ve been stuck in the how-to rut for a bit.

Wait! That’s exactly what I’ve been doing…spending more time in the drudge tasks, but discovering that *I* enjoy them. I enjoy creating a manual, and especially today when it’s so easy to publish to a worldwide audience of folks that guarantee it will be used FAR MORE than what it might be if i just passed it on to someone local. But creating those manuals just became a low-wage job…there are tons of folks creating how-to manuals.

Does that fact make my work less valuable to me? No…back to our janitor. I actually have met those wise old janitors, custodians, whatever the politically correct word is now. I like to think of them as wonderful people who have somehow transcended the stigma of being toilet bowl scrapers. Somehow, they have found a way to be happy doing what they’re doing, taking pride in their work.

One gentleman, about to retire from being a custodian for however many years, proudly displayed his toilet bowl scraper. Honestly, I was inquiring about his technique…”How do you get the bowls so darn white?” He took some time out of his busy schedule–when custodians are proud of their work, there is an unending list of things to do…when they’re not, well, you know–to show me.

That day, for about 10 minutes or so, garbed in a tie and long-sleeve shirt and dress pants, I learned a lot about scraping bowls. I’m not sure if he redefined his reality to see an opportunity to get ahead. Instead, he saw it as an opportunity to learn, even if he was engaged in drudge work that is considered “beneath educators” (well, not kindergarten teachers ).

As I reflect on that older, bald-headed, Hispanic, wrinkled, tidily-dressed (for a custodian, whatever that means) man, I can’t help but wonder if this person who took the time to learn how to clean toilet bowls so that they were pristine, who took the time to teach me how to clean toilet bowls, if he had been engaged many years ago…well…if he’d have been wearing the tie and the long-sleeve shirt.

And, whether I, without benefit of support, would have found myself as a custodian…and whether I would have had the courage to redefine my drudge work as opportunities for continuous learning and teaching. But wait…I still can do that sitting behind my desk.

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