You Can't Do Anything

Some 15-odd years ago or so, I was watching a documentary of some kind where they were looking at people who are able to handle speed. One of the sections was of a fighter pilot trainer and an aptitude test for multitasking, where the participant would have to be looking at 4 different screen quadrants, solving various kinds of puzzles simultaneously. Whilst the host of the show struggled heavily, the seasoned pilot looked like he was slowly doing his taxes.

This was pre-crypto, so doing taxes was less stressful.

Another time in the 90s, there was an interview on talk show in the US with Nigel Mansell, who was a World champion F1 driver, as well as Indy car champion. He was asked about how he is able to drive so fast, and told a story about being in the baseball batting cages with a friend, a professional baseballer. It was his first time swinging a bat, but he didn't miss one ball, no matter how fast they cranked the speed up. His friend found it incredible and asked how he was doing it and this is when Mansell found out that not everyone can slow down speed in their mind like he does. For him, the ball wasn't moving fast, because he chose not to see it moving fast.

Kind of like Matrix-esque bullet time.

In the US, there used to be an affirmative action program that put quota numbers of black students into the best colleges. This sounds like an act against systemic racism, but it didn't quite solve the problem, because while these people were incredibly smart and had always topped their respective classes and regions, everyone in the class at for instance MIT or Stanford are incredibly smart. What happened was many went from the top of the class, to the bottom of the class - even though they were still smarter than 99.5% of the rest of us. This created a massive amount of stress on them as they tried to keep up and prove themselves, with many dropping out of their scholarships early.

Was this in their favor?

However we look at these stories, what is apparent is that regardless of how much we might want it to be so, we aren't the same and have different strength and weakness profiles. What this means is that no matter how hard we try, we can't do "anything" because we aren't suited to everything. For example, not many people have the adequate skills and mentality required to be a fighter pilot, or a formula one driver, no matter how much they train, because they are competing with people who have it naturally, and train. Similarly, no matter how much I study, I am not going to ever be good enough to make it into MIT or Harvard, and if I was somehow granted a position, I would fail.

Why do I bring these things up?

I often talk about younger generations not "working hard enough" and calling the "soft" for burning out, but this might not be completely fair. It is possible that they (some) are working hard, but it is also possible that many are working at the wrong things, jobs that might not actually suit them. It could be like me getting into that cockpit and expecting to race into corners doing 320 kilometers (200Mi) an hour - it isn't going to happen. Not only that, while I am crawling around doing half that speed and feeling like it is moving fast, the rest of the field are whipping past me, whilst my team is screaming into the radio to hurry the hell up.

Maybe the reason so many of the young are burning out is because they just don't have the mental or emotional capacity to contend with the rigors of the job they have chosen. It isn't the job that is the problem, the bosses, or even whatever is happening with work culture, because there are plenty of people who are surviving and even thriving in the same conditions.

While it might not sound it to some, this is a very charitable view of the situation, because let's face it, they aren't the only ones to have chosen a poor career path ever. For example, I went into a business degree at university because it was the "safe choice" as it meant I can go into many fields. If I had followed my own heart, I would have gone into clinical psychology. Silly me. But, since I can't go back, I have made a career somewhere else. Sure, this isn't about non-suitability, but it definitely isn't the perfect fit for my talents.

So, what happens when people are looking to minimize the work they do and maximize their income? I would suspect that for many, they end up in jobs that might not be suited for them, like a technical person with no social ability getting into a people management position. Aptitude in various areas are needed are useful or even critical for some roles and if they aren't present, the person is going to struggle.

If we are talking our way into positions that don't suit us, but don't have the ability to close the gaps to what we need to do, we are going to have to do extra work, work longer hours, often be behind tasks, miss deadlines, fail publicly, let people down, face criticism, become ostracized.

Does that sound like a healthy work environment?

But, it isn't necessarily the environment itself, it is the response conditions of the person doing the role, or not doing the role, depending on how you want to look at it. It has got to be stressful and, it is likely to lead to all kinds of issues, including physical and mental health degradation.

Whose responsibility is job fit?

There are staff shortages in many positions currently, especially in places where there is an aging population problem. However, a lot of the jobs that are available aren't the most glamorous, nor the highest paid. However, this doesn't mean that there aren't people who are better suited to doing them than they are at doing another job. For instance, there are a lot of welding jobs available in Finland, with no one to fill them, but most people aren't actually suited to be welders. However, those that are might not be interested in taking the job either, because it has the impression of hard and dirty work. But it pays okay.

So, maybe it isn't that working conditions are that much more difficult than earlier, but instead, people are choosing to work in positions that they are less suited for. And, the difference between "good and bad" might not be overly significant, but enough for those who are worse to feel it - constantly behind, never being the best in class, and possibly always being last.

I find this argument far more compelling than the argument that people are just lazy, but it doesn't solve the issue if people are going to keep aiming for results they aren't suited to getting. Instead, perhaps what is happening is that people are less in touch with the reality of what they are actually good at and have bought into the "I can do anything" mentality that has been driven through culture the last forty years with increasing force.

The thing is that concessions shouldn't be made at the job level to be more inclusive, because we still want the best to do the tasks we care about. We want the best doctors, we want to watch the most skilled athletes. The conditions are known before a person takes a job and for the most part, the skillset that enables the job to be done well are also known. Perhaps those who are unable to cope, really should take a long hard look in the mirror and see if they are the kind of person who can make it work.