Inspired by a true story: When to Just Don’t Care

Posted at September 28, 2009 // Job / Career, Random Thoughts

Scene (In conference room C at approximately 9am):
In-house Creative Designer: What?!?! That wasn’t approved?
Me: No…
In-house Creative Designer: But, we’ve been moving forward with this already…
Me: Um… why?
In-house Creative Designer: Because I was told to! You should have told us that this design wasn’t approved!
My inner monologue: Um… I told your boss… and I would think that your boss would have told you…
Me: Well… I’m sorry about the confusion. But the design isn’t approved. I’ll keep you updated after we talk with the big boss later today… I’m hoping to get approval this afternoon…
In-house Creative Designer: Uh. Fine. Just keep me updated.
Me: Will do!

Everyday I learn something. On some days, it’s about marketing. On other days, it’s just about life. Today, I discovered a recurring theme in my meetings… people vent to me on matters over which I have absolutely no control.

I decided that this is when I should just don’t care. Why? Because caring takes energy, and I have limited amount of energy at the end of the day. In these cases, I have no or very little control over the matter the person was venting about. Therefore, a quick cost and benefit analysis would tell me that I could not exert enough energy to actually make a material change. Therefore, in these cases, I should just don’t care. I just need to let these comments roll right off of me, and focus my energy on something that would actually make a bigger change!

Photo credit: Dilbert tag, originally uploaded by Ol.v!er [H2vPk].