If You Can’t Get There In One…

While I was growing up, my family lived in a subdivision that was built around a golf course. Our house happened to back up to the number 6 hole which was a long par-5 with a dog leg left. For most of my adolescence I resented golf and, like my dad, viewed it has boring and prissy and best suited for kids who couldn’t play real sports. Therefore, the hole behind our house was nothing more than my extended play ground and throughout the year it served as the field on which I played nearly every sport, other than golf. However, despite my initial feelings, a curiosity in golf became somewhat unavoidable and as the years turned over, I slowly began to hack around with the game. My dad also reluctantly took up golf for the simple reason that everyone else played and if you wanted something to do on the weekend, then you played golf. We both learned the game rather informally and thus, had a hacker’s approach to the sport. Over time our skills progressed modestly and we each reached a level of play that was at least non-embarrassing. Due to this mutual interest, golf eventually provided my dad and I with an activity we could do together, and thus, we would occasionally play in an effort to find a common bond.

Oddly enough, one of the more valuable lessons I ever learned was something my dad taught me on the golf course. Since neither of us were any good, we would often shank balls out-of-bounds or at least off the fairway. Whenever I was in trouble, I would always visualize making an extremely low percentage shot that would require extreme luck and a degree of talent I did not possess. I was young, immature and defiant and if I needed to hit a ball through seven trees from underneath a bush, then I was going to make that miracle shot, Dammitt! Of course, this never worked and I would find myself in worse shape than when I started. Whenever we rolled up on my ball and discovered that I had one of these impossible shots, my dad would suggest, “If you can’t get there in 1, put yourself in the position to get there in 2”. What he meant was if chances of making this miracle shot are so small that it is nearly impossible, then do the wise thing and knock out a safe shot, so that you give yourself a chance to get there on the second shot. At the time, this advise always went in one ear and out the other.

Over a decade later, however, I think about that line of advise quite often. In the working world, not many people start off at their dream job. For most of us, it takes a lot of searching and a lot of working to figure out exactly what we want to do with our lives. Even more, once we have figured out what we want, it can be just as challenging to figure out how to get it. It can be challenging to see the value in low-level jobs, especially when the responsibilities seem asinine and obscure. I am learning this first hand. However, I’ve also learned what makes the experience more tolerable is maintaining the proper perspective of where that job is taking you. If you know what you ultimately want to be doing, then examine how you can realistically get there. How many steps are there between your ultimate goal and your current job? How is your present role going to put you in position for what you need to do next? You always need to be thinking about lining up your next move and remain cognizant that each shot sets up the next. If you can’t get there in one, make sure you are putting yourself in the position to get there in two…or three, or four…you get the point.