Page 166 - The Drucker Lectures

Do You Know Where You Belong? [ 147

ger capable of working. If he hadn’t been injured—and most of
them were—the work was terribly hard. And there were those
lonely winters with the howling wind, day in and day out. It took
a heavy toll. Now, that farmer in the North Dakota prairie didn’t
expect fulfillment from his job. All he hoped was that he would
be able to feed his children over the winter, and it was touch and
go. It was a living. It wasn’t a life. And the steelworker didn’t
expect fulfillment out of the job. He expected paychecks that
would enable him to feed his children.
But knowledge workers expect fulfillment. We also don’t get
injured anymore. Sitting behind a desk, the worst work-related
injury we can expect is hemorrhoids. And that doesn’t disable
you. And so now we have very long working lives. And we will
have to learn to take responsibility not just for a parallel career but
also for a second career. How do I repot myself? At what age?
And when the job becomes simply a place to hang your hat,
when it’s “Thank God It’s Friday,” when you begin to play games
with yourself so that it makes the job more complicated, then
you are bored. And boredom is a deadly disease. You need to be
challenged. The great danger is that you live physically long and
die mentally too soon, and the waste I see of ability and talent is
dreadful. So don’t say, “I’m stuck in the groove.” Say, “Where do
I belong? What do I have to contribute?”

From part of a lecture series for George Washington University.