There are three levels of activity in life:

• Doing stuff
• Preparing to do stuff
• Telling other people to do stuff

The inner rewards in each of these zones are quite different for different individuals. Some folks love to act, some to strategize, some to boss. Some loathe certain categories of action.

Yesterday I felt great heading out of the office: I had done some really good stuff. But then I paused, thought about it a bit more, and realized: what I actually had produced was stuff to help other people prepare to tell their bosses the plan to tell still other people what to do — with maybe a few more layers of indirection in between.

Some of the air went out of my Happy Balloon ...

(cf. PlansAndSituations (1999-08-13), PowerAsPerception (2000-01-05), FamilyHierarchies (2000-05-21), ...) - ^z - 2012-10-10