The Potentials of Human Being (圖)

The Potentials of Human Being

            I truly believe that each human being has huge potentials and 90% or higher of his potential has never been exercised.  Myself, for example, have a lot of potentials that have not been utilized.  I am sitting in front of my computer at work now, thinking things that have nothing to do with my job.  Isn’t this a typical example of wasting my time and energy?  Shouldn’t this time and energy be used in more economical or intellectual ways? And I don’t think that I am the only one having this issue.

            There are two reasons to explain this.  One is that I don’t really love my works, otherwise, I would have thinking and working on my job-related staffs all the time and be very happy about it.  Some of my colleagues are that kind of people.  They are always busy with their work, at least appears to me.  I have noticed that majority of the managers in corporations make themselves look busy.  The second reason is that my current responsibility limits my potentials --- in other words, I can do a lot more than what I do now.

            I really don’t know which reason is the main one, or maybe both are equally important.  Looking at the window of my office, it is snowing outside.  This is Wednesday afternoon, in a Northwest suburb of Chicago, I can’t help thinking that there must be a lot of people just like me in all these corporation offices, taking their time and mind off their work, thinking about other things.

            Recalling my last job in AXZ, I would say that about 90% of the time in office was wasted.  Now, at my current company, things are definitely better, probably 50% of my time is wasted. 

            I never understand why someone is so busy all the time but couldn’t accomplish much in industry.  Most of my projects never utilize my graduate school knowledge.  I guess maybe the thinking style make the difference.  Most of the industrial scientists pay way too much of attention about the details and forget about the real goals of the project, which usually is to solve a specific customer problem in the easiest and fastest way.  I am glad that I didn’t make it in academics because that is way too much of details involved.

            What are the things I can do better than most other people?

            I am pretty good at finding useful info by talking and reading literatures, and connect similar info from one application to another, deduct and generate ideas.  I am also pretty good at figuring a way to test the ideas quickly.  The goal is always clear in my mind and side-tract rarely happens to me.

            My patient is good.  I am pretty persistent.  Yet, I am flexible at listening other people’s ideas and not afraid to switch my positions.  I am pretty objective and fair in mind.  I think that I can be a pretty good R&D manager.

            That is what I am good at and that has been my career path.  The question is:  what do I like to do?  By doing a good job as a senior scientist in a company, I make a decent living and gain some degree of accomplishments.  My wife and I can live a comfortable life in the suburbs of Chicago.

            All career counseling books suggest that you should choose a job that fits you (your characters, your belief, etc.), so your chance of doing a better job than the others is higher.  There are at least two problems about this: one is that you have to REALLY know who you are, what you like, etc; and the other is you can actually find that kind of job to earn enough money.

            Most people get something in the middle --- some parts of their job utilized their natural talents and make them feel satisfied, some other parts don’t really fit them.  The happiness and success depend on the how much people use their best talents and how critical their works in their organization. 

            There are lots of lucks involved, of course.  Some people keep changing their jobs to try to get ahead a bit.  Some people get a job and just take off.  My friend Homer, for example, is looking for his 5^th job in 8 years.  I guess that is good, at least, he is looking for a better position, to improve himself.

            In reality, the numbers of people who can get to the executive positions are limited.  In most corporations in USA, the salary probably will go with the inflation if you are not being promoted.  And technical staffs usually top off at $120-130k range, which is the salary for middle R&D managers or senior technical persons in engineering etc.  Just like Michael Masterson in “Automatic wealth” mentioned, we need other income sources besides our daily jobs in order to get wealthy.  And stocks/bonds/options should not be the main income sources.  Real estate and small business are the main investments that people should do.

Since almost everyone in corporate America has a 401(k) account, everyone owns certain stocks/bonds in 401(k) accounts.  That is probably the main reason that the stock markets won’t fail too much: there is continuous cash flow in, just like the tax money.  On the other hand, most people are not sophisticated enough to handle their stock/bond themselves.  They have no choice but pass their hard-earning money to mutual fund managers who have historically lap behind the stock indexes.  I think this is one of the biggest economic problems in US.