Ben Patton

Something New, Yet Old

Life has a funny way of bringing up things from our past that we didn't expect to show up again. For many of us life has a way of pointing back to things that show our gifts that have developed over time.

This is the beginning of something new, yet old and I could not be more excited. Let me tell you why.

Frustration

For as long as I can remember I have always struggled with work. There is generally a 3-6 month period of excitement and dilligence but after some period of time, it fades. Now for many reading this the default assumption and judgement is "yeah the honey moon phase is now gone." I think there is a kernel of truth to that but we like to paint everyone in generalities and even for those who can 'buckle down and get things done' I would say it is still not quite that simple.

It wasn't always this way

I remember my first job out of college. I was working with a non-profit/ministry group. Over the course of the time working with this group I new I had some bent towards counseling. But in a oversimplification, my bent towards deep one on ones with people didn't match a job description that needed tenacity and relational bredth.

I knew I cared about people and this was affirmed by many. It was not uncommon, in fact it was quite frequent to hear some aspect of the following:

I feel really safe and welcomed with you

At the time I new that was deeply meaningful to me. But I had no idea why.

Towards the end of my time with this ministry I remember saying to my "boss" so to speak, that I knew I didn't fit the personality of someone that was wanted on staff by saying, "Can't I just meet with people how I want to meet with people?" The answer was no, not because anyone was being cruel, but because from a objectives standpoint we had lots of students that needed to take responsibility for and I wasn't contributing significantly.

So I left that non-profit and started my seminary journey and started working with a church while pursuing counseling. All in all that 4 years from 2016-2020 was formative but I still had this underlying frustration with work.

Aside

If you are reading this and wondering when I will get to what is new, you can click here. Nothing in my world is disconnected so all of this background builds the significance.

Covid Brings Change

Oddly for me, I started teaching myself to code in February of 2020. I knew my contract was up in June of that year so I needed to figure something out quickly. I was working with Senior Adults at the time and then March 2020 hit.

My work was relegated to a handful of phone calls a day and sending a weekly newsletter. I could not plan events. I could not plan studies. But I could write newsletters and call people to encourage them. Senior Adults were severely at risk of dying from Covid so I kept my distance. The loving thing was to take what we generally understood and apply it in the best way for "loving my neighbor."

With that small amount of "work" I had plenty of time to investigate things and I started learning how to code.

Fast forward to January of 2021 and I got my first job. Had a second job mid way through that year. A year later a 3rd job. 2 years after that a 4th job and now I am on my 5th job since learning to code. This is a normal path for many but reflection on this started for me about 6 months into my 3rd job as a software developer.

Working Genius

I discovered this assessment called The Working Genius. Before you roll your eyes related to personality assessment please read a few more sentences.

The primary difference between this assessment and others is this looks at how you contribute to getting work done. I have explained this assessment elsewhere but in summary one of my frustrations is "Tenacity." This means, in the assessments language that if I have to do tasks on a daily basis which require pushing things through to the finish line, I will be burned out really quickly.

So I carried this assessment through my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th jobs.

The Frustration of Assessments

Working Genius is probably my favorite assessment cause it discusses work and how you and I get work done which is sorely ignored in most of these assessments. The Personality assessments feel important but by and large just leave you hanging or you feel you have to be the person they say you are and that doesn't go really well at work.

So I have come to the conclusion that you need at minimum 2 assessments. The Working Genius and one other. Why? Because one fills in the style of work you like to do and the others tend to give you an idea of what things you can do to fit within your Geniuses.

Strengths Finders and Working Genius

The biggest gap I had after Working Genius was that it reasonated deeply with myself and others but it was really difficult to determine the "so what now" question that follows.

After spontaneously revisiting my Strengths Finders I started to have a lot of clarity.

Low Tenacity and Low Executing

My Working Genius tells me I have a frustation of Tenacity while my Strengths Finders puts all the lowest scored strengths for me in Executing. Why is this important?

Well, I would venture to say many like myself have contemplated and are probably prescribed ADHD medication. I have a current prescription I am waiting to be filled. Why? Because I cannot just focus and finish things. But here is the thing, I do a lot of things. I explore a lot of things. I ask a lot of questions. I think deeply about how people are experiencing products.

I just don't want to spend the mental effort finishing things.

In many places people will say you probably have a "lack of executing function." That isn't wrong. But a key question we should ask and explore is "is it a chemical thing or is it wiring?"

To add further difficulty to this conversation, the more you expect, the more society expects, the more rewarded those who have high execution are, the more we will see it as a flaw within ourselves and therefore a defficiency to be filled in or supplemented.

Geniuses and Strengths

So what are my Geniuses? Wonder and Enablement.

And what are my primary strenghts, as related to the Strengths Finders?

  1. Empathy
  2. Connectedness
  3. Developer
  4. Individualization
  5. Adaptability

I don't have a sentence to wrap this all up and explain these things together nicely BUT my top strengths are all relational. One of my geniuses is relational. And I am always thinking of possibilities and potential as relates to people.

Full Circle

So you've been reading or you skipped here because my goodness this guy writes a lot of words.

The primary thing I am trying to say here is that what was old and I thought a done pursuit, counseling, has come full circle in my life in the form of a pursuit of coaching others. I have been doing this for free to build up case studies and start working on my own frameworks/methods, of which I will write one very soon.

I have been devouring Kathy Sierra's book Badass: Making Users Awesome as well as a handful of other books she recommends. One is called The Progress Principle.

All of this combined with my history of work in ministry/non-profit and knowing a lot of common narratives around work, I just want to help people have hope and experience real progress in their day to day. This is a counseling/coaching trajectory I can be on because I am helping with a specific problem.

The counseling I was doing before was "all inclusive" which was so dang weighty from an emotional perspective. But this is helping people having meaning and progress in something they spend roughly a third of their life doing.

This is a pursuit of helping others who think frustration is part of life, who think that everything in life is about moving through the honeymoon phases to the long slow grind of no joy and happiness. For those who have given up on trying to have meaning in their 9-5 cause passion is flaky and fake but they know they still long for meaning. For those who are anxious about work and don't know why. For those who used to crush it at work and all the sudden have existential dread or are deeply apathetic towards work. For those who can't seem to get on the same page with their teams.

That is what I am pursuing. Life is too short. The world is too choatic. We are all wasting our days on social media because meaning feels like it is "out there" when there is a good path lined out "in here" that we just need some help understanding and believing we have the freedom and agency to pursue.

This would be a perfect time to plug a newsletter but alas, I just used my software skills to make a new blog and haven't had one setup yet so take a rain check.

If you read this far you are a hero to me and I am honored that you would let these words fill your mind for some period of time.

Thank you and press on.