What Mongolia Taught Me About Loving My Job
And a word of caution about this danger in the workplace
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My lips hovered over a small bowl of what looked like watered-down milk. “I remembered reading about this in Lonely Planet…but can I drink it?”
That’s what I was thinking as Mongolian girl who’d given it to me looked on, clearly unimpressed.
Her look seemed to ask, “Do you have the guts to drink it?”
I was sitting in her family’s ger, the round felt tents of nomadic Mongolian families who live on the steppe.
There was nothing but rolling grassland for miles and miles; beautiful and vacant except for this family’s ger and animals.
We’d arrived in a Russian jeep. They traveled on horseback. Some families had a motorcycle. It wasn’t uncommon to see five members of the same family on one.
It was the middle of the day, but inside the ger it was shadowy and smelled faintly of smoke.
The bowl held airag — fermented mares milk — a Mongolian traditional drink.
Mongolia is a landlocked country, sitting snugly between China and Russia. If there’s a middle of nowhere, this is it.
Mongolians are without equal when it comes their expertise riding horses and still today, many are nomadic herders. If you’ve seen Game of Thrones, imagine the Dothraki, without the violence.
One of my traveling companions told me tradition dictatest that it’s the older daughter’s job to get up in the morning and milk the mares to make the airag.
Mongolians used to ferment it in a leather bag. The family I visited used a plastic barrel.
That’s how I knew the girl who handed me this particular bowl of airag had gotten up early that morning and milked the mares that were tied in a string outside.
As I hovered about the bowl, I thought to myself, cow? Horse? What difference does it make? I took a long, respectable swig.
Now if you’re wondering Airag tastes like, it has the approximate taste of milk that you know is not 100% perfect when you put that spoonful of Cheerios in your mouth, but you’ve just watched your brother eat the last Pop Tart, so you think, “oh what the hell, it’s better than nothing”
It’s been a while since I was there, yet I never forgot it’s the oldest daughter’s job to rise early and milk the mares.
I guess because in my family, I was the oldest daughter, and that job would have fallen to me.
That would be fine because I like horses, but I loathe getting up early. I could have done an ace job of it, except for that.
I don’t imagine the Mongolian teenager had much say in the matter. Tradition is powerful.
A lot of work gets assigned this way.
We fit people to job descriptions that are rarely well-written and infrequently updated.
When we begin work, just like when we begin life, we aren’t in the position to ask for adjustments. We do what we’re told.
Imagine you’re great at 90% of this job, and 10% you dislike. Why not carve the 10% out and give it to someone else, trade it or delete it entirely?
Result: Better job, happier you.
Typically the jobs are only slightly more personalized than “You’re the oldest daughter, so you milk the mares.”
And then we assess the person’s performance and tell them they need to “improve” what they are not good at doing (and probably don’t want to do anyway) rather than adjust a job description or find someone who would prefer to do it and therefore do it better.
Cynics justify this by believing that “work” is a four-letter word. We’re taught to believe you’re not supposed to like it, and if you do, you must not be doing it right.
I used to know someone who suggested “job” should stand for Joy of Being. Maybe some achieve that. Even dream jobs have sharp edges.
Wherever you are on the joy-at-work spectrum, it should never be a manifestation of, “I had to suffer, so you have to suffer.”
That’s a corrosive tradition we all can do without.
When we don’t accept the premise that work should be painful or make us miserable, we raise our expectations for ourselves and others.
Happy people do better work, generate better ideas, and deliver better service.
Success does not require suffering.
Look around. What do you do that de-motivates you, slows you down, or that you just plain hate?
Ask yourself: How can you give it away, trade it, delegate or delete it?
Whether it’s a weekly meeting or a daily commute, times and traditions are changing, and you can, too.
And if you ever get a chance, I can’t say I recommend Airag, but it’s worth a try, and you’ll have a story to tell.
If you liked this article, you might like this one: https://medium.com/@courtlk/if-you-see-this-in-the-parking-lot-at-work-count-on-getting-screwed-ea23db654391
