Dave thought he had gotten a dream job. He hadn’t been out of high school long when he wound up with a job as a video game tester.

That probably seems like the perfect job for most game players, but he found that it wasn’t what he expected. Dave thought he’d be playing games all day. The reality was that he’d play a game for a while and then write up an extensive “bug report” about what needed fixing.

He didn’t like doing the bug reports. He wasn’t good at them.

At that point he could have just marked time while he looked for another job. Or he could have quit. But Dave chose to make the most of his situation.

He didn’t know it but he was following one of my mother’s best bits of advice. She thought that whatever situation you find yourself in you should ask, “What good can I make of this?”

Dave made good of his situation by learning how to write reports well. It was hard in the beginning. But soon the reports were something he could handle decently, maybe not joyfully, but decently.

Dave also decided that he could expand his job to do some of the things he liked. He knew a lot about sound systems and sound mixing. So he started making suggestions about how the games he was testing could be improved by making the audio experience better.

By the time he was ready to move on to his next job, Dave had become a decent report writer. And he’d earned himself an Associate Producer credit for his sound work.

Dave followed a strategy my mother would have loved. Whatever situation you find yourself in, ask yourself, “What good can I make of this?” Dave saw two excellent ways to make good of a job that wasn’t quite what he wanted.

He figured out what he could learn and how he could improve. That’s a great choice because you take your learning and skills with you for the rest of your life.

And he looked for ways to change his job so that it was a better fit. That’s a good strategy, too, since it makes it more likely that you’ll do great work.

Not every job you get will be the great experience you expect. But you can do what Dave did and make good of it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.