Energy Creates Energy
The best advice often comes at the strangest times.1 #
A little over three years ago, I found myself sitting in a cube farm in the middle of Kansas City, Missouri staring intently at a coffee cup branded with my current employer’s logo. They were all about giving away free company swag, this place was. I had t-shirts, jackets, polos and pint glasses all emblazoned with our name. But it was the coffee mug that made me chuckle. Below the company logo was a quote, one that seemed so ironic to me at that very moment:
“A company is known by the people that it keeps.”
A few minutes prior, I had just been called into my boss’s office. If they didn’t get any work in soon, he said, they were going to have to let me go. This particular company’s workload ebbed and flowed with some pretty major Fortune 500 industries and when the work dried up, so did that cube farm. The week prior, I saw six fellow co-workers get the boot. I had only been there five months, so I probably should’ve seen it coming.
But the mug, I thought, what about the saying on the stupid mug? This whole first in/first out concept of hiring and laying off was foreign to me. I grew up in a small town in rural Ohio, went to college nearby and then got a job in that same small town. It was a company that really was known by the people that it kept. To the tune of 20, 30 and 40 years. My department had all of five employees when I decided to up and leave. I was fairly green when I started there fresh out of college but they kept me and worked through my naivety. After seven years of making peanuts and not advancing, though, I was ready for something new.
I knew a few folks in KC2 , so I stuffed my compact with just about everything I owned and drove the 750 miles to my new home. After riding couches for 2 ½ months and blowing through my savings, I lucked out and got a job at a slick-looking engineering firm. I joined the ranks of about 40 other employees in my department. This wasn’t small potatoes.
They served fresh fruit in the break-room and gave Lunch & Learn’s on staying fit. They named their conference rooms after classic rock records. We had our Christmas party in the upstairs of a popular downtown brewery. Everything but the actual work itself was pretty cool.
Enter the CEO. I’m not convinced he was actually involved in any of the day to day affairs but he was undoubtedly responsible for the energy that loosely held the place together. He was the hype guy. I think that’s what made him so likable.
He was really, I mean REALLY, into fitness. He wasn’t just a marathon runner. He was an ultra-marathoner. Absolutely insane. Like 50+ miles in the wilderness insane. And if there’s one thing you should know about ultra-marathoners, it’s that they feel it’s their personal life debt to make sure everyone they know becomes ultra-marathoners too.
This guy tried incredibly hard to get everyone in the office as much into running as he was. During my second interview, he popped in to my (then future) boss’s office and talked to me excitedly about the fitness-crazed culture there. He gave me a copy of the book Born To Run and insisted it was required reading before my first day. In fact, I’m reasonably convinced I was hired there because I am/was an avid cyclist. Close enough, I suppose.
He was successful in converting several of the long-time employees there into ultra-runners. Hell, he nearly convinced me to sign up for a marathon. Who knows how much pull that probably would have got me.
“Energy creates energy, all you need is a spark.”
…is the kind of stuff I’d hear him spout off quite frequently at those lunch time gatherings. Back then, it went in one ear and out the other. In fact, after I knew that his hip, fitness-cultured company was firing me, I wrote off every little catchphrase he said. The “brain food” in the break room, the Yellow Submarine: all of it went went out the door. Negative energy created negative energy.
I’m at my second job since leaving that company (and so are many of my fellow co-workers, actually) but I still think about that phrase a lot. Energy creates energy. Damn, that crazy CEO was right. Potential energy is only realized when it becomes kinetic. It’s simple and it’s cyclical
Energy is infectious.
If I only worked five months at that company so I could learn that principle, then I think it was worth it. It’s got me up off my butt more times than I can count. Whether it’s getting out on my bike and putting some miles in or forgoing procrastination and pushing forward on a project.
All you need is a spark. It’s so true. Once you crest that hill of procrastination, laziness or whatever, you’re past the hardest part. We’re all momentum driven. At least, I am. Once you get me going, you’re hard pressed to stop me. Writing this post was much that way.
I’ve tried a lot of methods to increase my productivity, both on and off the clock. Nothing has done more for me in the last three years than grasping this concept. Physical energy begets mental energy begets social energy begets spiritual energy…
You just have to get the ball rolling.
Three years later and I haven’t run a marathon yet. But I still have that stupid mug. It’s my potential energy. Maybe one day I’ll find myself a spark.
Notes #
- This post was copied & edited from my original post on the subject over at Medium. Hey, I switched.
- That’s an incredibly truncated version of the actual story: (http://ryanstraits.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/on-leaving-and-lebron/)