I Am A Wartime General

Over the last few years, I have come to realize that I am an excellent wartime general…but a fairly mediocre one in peacetime.

I have only the most vague sense of a job description. This lack of clarity leads to stammering and pauses when asked what it is, exactly, that I do. Well…the best way to put it is that I’m the right-hand-man of the CEO of a multi-state consumer loan company that often dabbles in other industries. While I tend to focus on our technology needs, I do whatever needs to be done. Some days that may mean overseeing the development of our proprietary software or perhaps zipping around the country to open and manage 13 or so eBay drop-off stores. Other days it may mean rafter-walking an additional CAT-5 cable from the D-Mark to our servers so we can access our newest T-1. Some days it means teaching a class to our store managers so they know how to use some new feature of our software. Other days it means planning layouts for our webpage or hiring an electrician to fix the parking lights or meeting with the heads of state financial agencies to discuss regulations. The list goes on because in a company that runs as lean as we do, the upper management wear many hats. Generally, I like this variety. Each day is a bit different than the last and for the most part, I get to choose which situation I’m handling and which situation I’m delegating. On most days, I like my job.

In addition to being a nice situation on a daily basis, it has also afforded me the opportunity to see what sort of situations I gravitate toward. I can look back over six years of work and can now see a fairly obvious trend in the sorts of tasks I chose, the sorts of tasks I excelled at, and the sorts of tasks on which I did less than stellar. And what I see is that I am a wartime general.

I like a short-deadline crisis. My mind snaps into focus amidst the crossfire chaos of high-stress multitasking. Got a time critical project that requires work from varied groups within the company and an understanding of how those groups relate? No problem. Just drop me behind enemy lines with a survival knife and a ball of string and you’ll have your product on time. I like making fast decisions and seeing the results of those decisions spin off in real time.

Conversely, long-term projects will never fail to make my mind wander. When the gunfire stops and the general is asked to cease building emergency triage units and instead put his mind to designing a well-thought out hospital that will serve the community for years to come…this general stumbles.

In fact, give me a long-term project and I’ll meander away from it and find crisis. I’ll tackle any and all unrelated problems that flow in until I’ve turned the long-term project I was supposed to be working on into a crisis…THEN I get interested.

And don’t get me wrong. I’m good as a consultant on the long-term projects. Let me swing by and take a quick overview of the project…I’ll make good observations and recommend useful changes. But don’t put the whole thing in my hands…it will flounder.

In retrospect it all seems very obvious that I would be this way. You see, I’m a procrastinator. I come by it naturally as my father was a procrastinator as well. Nature? Nurture? No idea. But he certainly passed it along. And as a procrastinator, I will inevitably put off a project until the last minute. Fortunately (or unfortunately since it has lead me to continue this trend) I am very good in those last few moments right before the bell. I remember being asked to get up in front of my Research Writing class during my sophomore year of college. Seems no one else had met the profs expectations and she felt certain that an explanation of the prep work that I had done on the project would help prove her point about the long process that is research writing.

“Well,” I said. “I did some research on Sunday morning. Started writing Sunday evening around 7 but got pulled away for a card game. Got back to writing around 11 or so. In the morning I ran spell check and read back through it once. Printed it up ten minutes before class and stapled it together as I was running across campus.” She never asked me about my prep work again.

And so, years later, I’m still that same guy. I cannot bring myself to do the prep work. I cannot keep up the energy needed to tackle such long-term projects. I need the adrenaline of chaos.
In the end, I guess what this means is that outside of my children I’m probably never going to create something truly amazing. Truly amazing takes either a) planning or b) enough prior dedication to craft that inspiration seems natural. I have neither. However, I have a niche. When the shit really hits the fan and you’re no longer even trying for truly amazing…when time constraints and disorder mean reaching pretty damned good would be a miracle…I’m your wartime general.