Making My Point the Hard Way

For a couple of weeks now it seems I have been going around three sides of the barn just to find the horse at the end of reins in my hand. No matter how hard I slug away at the paperwork and minutiae of my job, I never seem to catch up. This is probably pretty good evidence that I’m working stupid.

Years ago, my company kept me working incredible hours; I came in early, stayed late and could be found on the job seven days a week. “I am constantly putting out fires,” I told a friend.

My friend was the director of human resources at a local hospital and he promptly answered, “Show me a good firefighter and I’ll show you a good arsonist.”

I thought about this for a while and realized that my friend was probably right; I was undoubtedly putting out lots of small fires and solving a host of little problems and my style of management was definitely starting about twice that many fires. I changed my attitude, trusted my employees more, worked fewer hours, and somehow got a lot more done. In short, I worked smarter.

I suspect that somehow, at the university I have slipped back into stupid. My work habits have gotten sloppy. I’m reacting instead of preparing. I know better than this, I learned a long time ago from my mother that lazy people work the hardest, even if it is just mental work. Actually, I heard my mother say the words, but it took a while before I understood the concept.

Years ago, I got my private pilot’s license. While I was still learning, my instructor and I took a cross country flight to Fort Worth. On the way back, we landed for fuel, both for the plane and the two of us, at the Odessa Airport. Because we arrived late in the day, the setting sun was almost more than our sunglasses could handle. As we taxied up to the FBO (Fixed Based Operations-essentially a service station for airplanes) my instructor got out and suggested that I shoot a few solo takeoffs and landings while he ordered us some hamburgers.

I dutifully taxied out, took off, flew around the pattern and made my approach for a landing. I have to admit it wasn’t one of my better landings: not exactly bad-just wasn’t as good as my initial landing while the instructor had been in the plane.

“Don’t worry” I thought to myself. “Conditions have changed. The plane is lighter without your instructor, the sun has almost set, the wind has changed a little, and this airport is several thousand feet lower in altitude from the airport where you are used to landing. Here, the air is thick compared to the high deserts of New Mexico.”

So I took off, circled the field, and lined up for another approach. By now, the runway landing lights were on, so I turned on the plane’s landing light and carefully brought the little plane down. This landing was even more difficult than the previous attempt. Not bad, but difficult. I finally made contact with the runway, gave the plane full power and took off for my third and final solo landing.

“Snap out of it!” I thought. “You can do better than this. Conditions here are NOT that much different than home. You’re just tired; straighten up and fly right!”

Evidently, a motivational speaker I’m not. The last landing was tough, the dark runway was difficult to make out at night as I slowly descended, gingerly trying to make contact with the pavement. The people of Odessa really needed to buy some better landing lights for that was the darkest airport I had ever seen. It seemed like I descended forever, slowly lower and after what I thought was the longest approach of my life, I finally felt the wheels make contact with the runway.

I was mentally exhausted as I taxied the plane back to the FBO where I found my instructor smiling. He was leaning against the wall eating a hamburger as I got out of the plane.

“Mark, those were three pretty good landings.” He said. “They would have been even better if you had remembered to take off those sunglasses.”

I’ve just got to remember to work smarter.