I feel you. Certain professions have an emptiness to them because you don’t know if what you do matters.
I did about 15 years as a medic in a rural area. And while the saying is “You work on family and friends”, I often had no clue if the people I scraped up and treated in the back of my bus lived or died. Once I dropped them at the ER, that was it. It was just a black hole that I could very rarely get a glimpse into. It left a real empty spot inside not knowing if what you did mattered.
So, go home tonight, pour a whisk(e)y and do what I did-- pretend it does.
But why should we think so much about the final result when it’s out of our hands? Without you, these people probably wouldn’t have gotten any care whatsoever (or at the least, delayed with it -> higher risk for worse results).
Unless you did stuff to worsen their condition, you’ve undoubtedly saved many lives, and many people are very thankful for your contributions. So, thank you!
If we discount natural human curiosity, knowing how your efforts turned out can be very important to getting better at your job. If the only way you can know how it turned out is if someone yells at you for screwing up, that’s a poor way to improve your skills.
If you a designing a new UI for a program, it’s good to know that the end user liked how you rounded that one icon, but the color pallet could be a bit brighter. It’s how we improve and get better. To not know often leads to mediocrity because your attitude can quickly become “Eh, didn’t get yelled at, good enough.” How many bad bad UIs are out there?
Same for me, knowing that how I treated a patient in something small could make a huge difference in their out come before we even got to the hospital. And not knowing how the outcome turned out slowed my personal development as a medic. It’s not about being ‘good enough’ but doing the very best you can each time you get paged out. Because when someone calls for that ambulance, it’s very often the worst day of their lives. And they are often pretty sure they might well die. At that point the last thing you want is a Good enough’ attitude.
I feel you. Certain professions have an emptiness to them because you don’t know if what you do matters.
I did about 15 years as a medic in a rural area. And while the saying is “You work on family and friends”, I often had no clue if the people I scraped up and treated in the back of my bus lived or died. Once I dropped them at the ER, that was it. It was just a black hole that I could very rarely get a glimpse into. It left a real empty spot inside not knowing if what you did mattered.
So, go home tonight, pour a whisk(e)y and do what I did-- pretend it does.
But why should we think so much about the final result when it’s out of our hands? Without you, these people probably wouldn’t have gotten any care whatsoever (or at the least, delayed with it -> higher risk for worse results).
Unless you did stuff to worsen their condition, you’ve undoubtedly saved many lives, and many people are very thankful for your contributions. So, thank you!
If we discount natural human curiosity, knowing how your efforts turned out can be very important to getting better at your job. If the only way you can know how it turned out is if someone yells at you for screwing up, that’s a poor way to improve your skills.
If you a designing a new UI for a program, it’s good to know that the end user liked how you rounded that one icon, but the color pallet could be a bit brighter. It’s how we improve and get better. To not know often leads to mediocrity because your attitude can quickly become “Eh, didn’t get yelled at, good enough.” How many bad bad UIs are out there?
Same for me, knowing that how I treated a patient in something small could make a huge difference in their out come before we even got to the hospital. And not knowing how the outcome turned out slowed my personal development as a medic. It’s not about being ‘good enough’ but doing the very best you can each time you get paged out. Because when someone calls for that ambulance, it’s very often the worst day of their lives. And they are often pretty sure they might well die. At that point the last thing you want is a Good enough’ attitude.