Enjoying Your Job Too Much! We need to enjoy results instead.

The worst plumber you can have install a water system is one who thoroughly enjoys doing plumbing work.  I just installed a new system in a home where the previous installation consisted of a crisscrossed jumble of copper tubing and  fittings, especially elbows.  Above are some pictures of some of the old system after it had been removed.  The main problem here was the heavy iron load that clogged the 3/4" copper tubing and jammed the controls of the old filter system.  It was made worse due to the fact that every elbow and fitting acted as a restriction to the flow of water.  The copper tubing and fittings clogged with solid iron.  The new system is twice the size with less than a third the number of elbows.

But this goes beyond plumbing and water filtration.  It is about philosophy in your work and career.  The plumber who installed this old system loved doing plumbing work and would rather just get right into the plumbing instead of planning everything out.  It turned into a disaster.  What we should be doing in our jobs is loving results and not the actual process.  A love of results ensures the best outcome for clients and customers.  A love of the process, in this case the process of installing plumbing fittings, created a non functioning mess.

There are fields where this is worse.  A few years ago, my wife had a small cyst on her wrist and she went to the doctor.  This man enjoyed surgery and immediately wanted to operate on the wrist.  My wife decided to wait and see, but the doctor actually called our home several times to pressure her into going under the knife.  I am not sure if this is ethical in medicine.  She decided to stop taking his calls and eventually, the cyst went away on its own.  This doctor was in love with the process of surgery and most likely the money he earned from surgery and had no regard for the long term ramifications of surgery on such a delicate and fine tuned part of the body.

And there are others.  How about our 24 hour news channels?  They will be at the scene of one or another disaster or tragedy and they just love reporting and getting a scoop so much that they fling countless handfuls of poop in all directions, not caring about accuracy or the damage their wild reporting causes.  And our legislators who love writing laws so much they ignore perfectly good laws that are already on the books and are not being enforced.  There are countless others, but I am just a lowly plumbing contractor who works in the water treatment field.  I would love to read your examples if you write them as a response to this blog.

www.cleanwaterman.com