Today is Friday and for many employees it is the end of the standard work week. No more grinding away for our bosses. It is time to get out there and wake up when nature tells us to and spend our time on our own desires!
Yesterday while listening to a podcast I heard a term I know used in a different topic. The term was grinding. I heard the term grinding used to describe repetitive work but, in the podcast the term was used to describe repetitive game play. Grinding in games (video games) is the act of engaging in repetitive tasks to gain some type of performance outcome. According to many game developers grinding is necessary to give all players an advantage. In the wikipedia article , the defense of grinding in video games has to do with the pareto principle.
The pareto principle is another term I have heard a lot at work. Essentially the Pareto Principle (named after the man who wrote it down the first time Vilfred Pareto), says that 80 % of your consequences (winning in a game or building widgets at work) will come from 20% of your actions (20 percent of the players in a game are high performers, 20 percent of the workforce get that widget in the truck out the door and or in the hands of the customer). Grinding was set up in games to off set the pareto principle now see the problem with that is, the pareto principle most likely will now apply to the grinders instead of the players.
I think if someone does not enjoy grinding in a game they should not grind in that game.
My grandfather always encouraged me to become a weather man (I know they are called meteorologist). “Look they, do not need to be right, they only work twice a day and they get to go to work clean and come home clean.” I didn’t become a meteorologist it wasn’t really my passion. I find everything interesting don’t get me wrong but weather didn’t get me out of the bed.
I am fortunate in that, I work with a field that I am passionate about and engages me. I enjoy the weekend and I joke about working for the weekend but, I don’t mind it when I have to work (a little) late.
I hope that whatever you are grinding at you truly enjoy or at least find interesting if not I encourage you to find something that sparks joy
The Corrigan Encore 