Do you know who this is?
No? Me neither, because sadly, despite a plethora of news outlets reporting about him, none of them even bothered recording his name. But I know what his job is. The manhole he’s floating in is filled with the sewage water of Dhaka, a city in Bangladesh. He’s a municipal worker.
This man’s job is to clean up 18 million people’s sh*t.
He wears no protective clothing, no goggles, and if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut, well… The only ‘safety measure’ taken is the stick his coworkers hold out to pull him up once he’s done. Diving topless into the liquid filth of his fellow citizens, he must clear blockages with his bare hands. Without protection from the cockroaches and toxic fumes that surround him, all it takes is one, sudden rush of fresh sewage, and he’s dead.
What was that thought you had last week again? The one about your job sucking? Doesn’t feel so bad now, does it?
The Missing Brick
While it’s crazy to realize that jobs like this still exist, there’s something even crazier about this story. Despite having literally the crappiest job on the planet, it’s not hard to imagine that this nameless stranger puts more effort into his work than you, me, or anyone with the luxury of reading this article.
Now, you might say: “Well, of course! That’s because his livelihood depends on it!” And I agree. In case your bells aren’t ringing already, take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which explains what drives our behavior in certain conditions of life. Here’s a visualization of it:
While it’s quite a useful depiction, there is one huge flaw in Maslow’s concept: it orders human achievements by their desirability, not the motivation we have to accomplish them. Besides this pecking order of dreams being highly subjective and mostly based on Western ideals, our drive to chase them doesn’t go up in a similarly straight line, even if we agree with the ranking.
Case in point: me.
At the Whim of Motivational Tides
On 17th of August, 2018, I took my — fingers crossed — last exam ever. In total, I had a batch of three this semester. One subject was called ‘lightweight construction.’ What sounded really cool at first turned out to be my worst nightmare, once I glimpsed at the material and read Institute for Aerospace Engineering, Astronautics and Space Technology slathered across the top.
Now I love Elon as much as the next nerd, but I really don’t give a damn about how I can calculate the outer booster’s plastic panel’s inner tension by hand. Especially if a computer can do it in two seconds. But it was part of the curriculum, so I had to see it through. Or, did I?
I started college in 2010. Back then, a class like this would’ve obliterated any kind of mental space in my brain for weeks. Ocupado. Now it felt annoying, quite the chunk of work, but doable. I studied, summarized, and practiced for seven days, and I passed it. To be honest, it would’ve been hard to sacrifice any more of my attention than I already did. So what’s the difference?
Eight years ago, my Maslowian motivation curve looked something like this:
The best people like me, who never had to fight for it, can do is to put survival at a default 100. Comparatively, I had a huge need for safety just coming out of high school and esteem slowly started trickling in when competition became more obvious. Eight years later, the curve has changed to this:
Once I covered safety financially, I cared for activities in that arena less and less, which very much includes my Master’s degree. But contrary to what you might expect next, esteem has dropped, belonging only risen slightly, whereas I’m now incredibly motivated by putting out quality, creative work. The point?
Beyond being non-linear, the curve changes. Constantly.
Most of the time this happens slowly, but sometimes, it can be vastly different from one day to the next. I worked years to reduce safety as a driving force, but the realization that I could care less about status as long as I get to do what I want came rather suddenly.
All along, my work ethic reflected the current state of the curve. I find this to be a rather universal connection. You can derive other people’s desires from looking at their behaviors and usually, those predictions are fairly accurate. And yet, despite most of us being made aware of this connection quite early in life, we completely ignore it once our lives aren’t in immediate danger.
It happens to even the best of us.
If You’re Willing to Die on a Treadmill, You Just Might
Years ago, when asked about his work ethic, Will Smith famously said he wasn’t afraid to die on a treadmill:
“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?”
It took even someone with all the possibility in the world to fulfill every conceivable need the better half of a decade to realize it’s actually not.
Most of us start life in the safety category. We never really struggle to survive, but instead of looking what else we can struggle for, we wrap ourselves in more of the false desirability of what we already have. So we choose the safe job. The most passable school. The sure thing. But even people on higher levels get stuck.
Will Smith completely overshot in the esteem category. He was so busy chasing bigger box office numbers and more accolades that he missed the forest for the trees. Until two years ago, when things clicked into place.
“I’ve worked out a mission statement for myself and for the last few years, the mission statement has stayed the same. It’s been ‘Improve Lives.’ So when I go into something, I’m looking for how the quality of this piece could potentially improve lives. But it’s all along the way. It’s when you make the movie and how you’re interacting with people in the process. The concept of improving lives runs through the center of everything I do and then I realized that the way to improve lives is to continually improve yourself.”
Rather than winning the revenue rat race, he’s now more focused on people, on picking projects he wants to stand for, and on making an impact in a meaningful way. And while the curve will always remain somewhat of a mystery, the message people like Will, people who’ve noticed its changing nature, send to us is clear: take a step back and look at it.
The View From the Top
There are two takeaways from all this. Here’s the first:
Your work ethic changes when you prioritize a new set of needs.
How motivated you are indeed depends on where you live on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But unless you’re running for your life, it’s up to you to prioritize those needs. You’re the one assembling the pyramid. You can spend your whole life chasing love and maybe, that’s the right choice for you.
But you can also make an effort to shift to needing something else. It may not happen in a day, but your career, your motivation, these curves, the pyramid, your life, it all ties together. And none of it is linear. Use the power you have, because you’re already holding the reigns. The second lesson is this:
Every day in the worst week I could possibly have is still packed with more things to be grateful for than even the best day of the Dhaka sewage cleaner.
I might be stuck with a shitty task, but I still get to sleep in a warm and comfy bed each night. I can still eat good food, have lots of coffee, and listen to music while crunching numbers. But if I’m stuck in self-actualization mode, I can’t see any of those things. No matter how motivated it might usually make me.
Since we’re building our own pyramids, it’s important to look down every once in a while. And if you see someone stuck in a sewer, hold out a stick and pull them up.