I'd Love to Fix Your Dryer
I recently fixed my mother in law’s dryer. It brought me more satisfaction than anything I’ve done in my ten year career.
Why did a simple appliance repair mean more than money made and promotions achieved?
Most importantly, it made a clear, immediate, positive impact. I got to see the smile on her face when the dryer worked and she realized she didn’t have to buy a new one.
It didn’t involve manipulating data on a spreadsheet or writing a report nobody would ever read. It involved taking a dryer that didn’t get hot and turning it into one that did. It was something I couldn’t fake. Either the dryer worked or it didn’t. And on this lucky day, that damn thing worked!
I took note of how I felt after fixing that dryer because it was surprising. It was a simple task. It only required some YouTube instruction and persistence. But I felt more fulfillment from this one simple task than from anything I accomplished in the last ten years at work.
If I was the only one in this position, it wouldn’t matter. But I bet many of you reading this would’ve felt the same way. And that’s actually pretty sad.
We’re spending enormous chunks of our lives earning (probably really good) money but feeling like we aren’t doing anything of substance or meaning. We’re checking boxes, completing tasks, updating spreadsheets, sending emails, and staring at cubicle walls like Peter Gibbons from Office Space.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful. While I don’t get much fulfillment from my job, it does provide great benefits, like enough money to live in a nice apartment, invest for the future, drive the car I want, and go on vacations with my wife. We can afford to buy the grass fed ground beef and go to the expensive gym. All these things are fantastic, and I appreciate that my job allows me to have them.
But two things can be true at the same time:
A boring, somewhat meaningless job can be fantastic for you financially.
That same job can suck the soul from your body like a Dementor if you don’t balance it with fulfilling activities.
So how do we find fulfillment?
I think we look for hobbies, activities, or challenges we find interesting, and we improve at them. We spend time doing them until we see progress. The more likely those things are to be useful to others, the more fulfillment they’re likely to provide to us.
In Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford writes, "The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy."
He talks at length about the time he spent running his motorcycle repair shop and the immense pride he felt from that work.
Customers would bring him bikes that weren’t working, and he would return bikes that were, just like I did with the dryer. The more time he spent working on motorcycles, the better he got at it, and the more fulfilling it became.
Imagine that.
It’s not some deep revelation, but the process goes something like this:
Consistency leads to competence.
Competence leads to confidence.
And confidence leads to a feeling of fulfillment.
This cycle probably works—to an extent—for everything. But I imagine competence working on motorcycles leads to a much higher degree of fulfillment than competence crafting the perfect pivot table in Excel.
And why is that the case?
If I had to guess, I’d say the person who receives a working motorcycle is generally much more excited than the person who receives a working pivot table.
Crawford took great pride in walking into a restaurant with his wife and receiving preferential treatment because he had fixed the owner’s motorcycle. People knew him as a motorcycle mechanic, and he provided services people needed. Services that made people happy.
I understand most of us won’t become motorcycle mechanics in our spare time. Most of us currently driving desks won’t quit our jobs to become HVAC technicians. That’s not what I’m saying.
What you might want to do is perform an honest assessment of your career—the thing you spend so much time doing—to determine if it’s providing the fulfillment you need. If it is, that’s fantastic. You’re a lucky person, and I’m happy for you.
If it’s not, don’t worry. You’re like me and millions of other people out there. Even if your job isn’t providing fulfillment, it’s probably providing you with other excellent benefits—like healthcare, and the ability to live in a nice home instead of a van down by the river. Don’t discount these benefits. But don’t settle for a life where you’re not completely fulfilled.
Find something you want to pursue and do it regularly. If it’s something that is useful to others, even better.
Why does it matter if it’s useful to other people?
Let me give you an example.
I spent a lot of time this past year working on my golf game. I improved a decent amount. Consistent practice led to increased skill, which increased my confidence on the course. It definitely brought some fulfillment.
But nobody cares how good you are at golf.
Being good at golf isn’t something I can use to make other people happy. My ability to stick a nine iron on the green from 150 yards wasn’t doing a damn thing for my mother in law’s broken dryer.
On the other hand, I spent the last two years learning how to make the perfect pizza. I tried different doughs, different sauces, and different pans. I made my own dough, and I bought dough from the store. I put the toppings on top of the cheese, and I put them underneath. I let the dough rise, and I pressed it out cold.
I dumped more toppings into the bottom of the oven than I’d like to admit. It’s no easy task sliding a pie from a paddle to a stone without losing any passengers.
But more than two years—and hundreds of pizzas—later, I’m a pretty great pizza chef.
Last week we had some family over for dinner. I made five pizzas, and everyone seemed to love them. Feeding the family the delicious pizza I’ve been working years to perfect was much more fulfilling than telling them about the great golf shot I hit earlier in the day.
I don’t have any plans to quit my job and open a pizzeria or an appliance repair shop. But I do plan to keep learning skills I enjoy that benefit myself and others.
I think survival, self-sufficiency, and handyman type skills have the highest fulfillment potential, but there are tons of other options. One of my favorites is writing. The more I write, the better I get. The better I am at writing, the more confidence I have. And when people read my writing and enjoy it, that’s pretty damn fulfilling.
I might fix some more dryers too, since that’s where this whole thing started. So if yours breaks, you know who to call.
Better yet, fix it yourself. You might be surprised how much you enjoy it.
Photo by Marshall Williams on Unsplash
