The Work You Don’t See

 

Back in the days of my first marriage, everyone wanted me to become a teacher. My parents felt that I had an “academic” personality rather than a commercial personality. My then wife and her family kept drilling in the fact that teaching was an “iron rice-bowl,” and then there were people told me that teaching was great because teachers finished work by 12 noon and instead of being stuck with two weeks paid leave like everyone else, teachers had school holidays.

I’m reminded of this because this is not the reality of teaching as a career. Let’s start with the working hours. It’s true that the official work day ends at around 12 noon but it also starts at seven in the morning, which means that the official working day is around six-hours, which is nearly the same as any office job. That is before you have factored in things like extra-curricular activities, committee meetings and let’s not forget the marking. When you add up all these things, the working day of a teacher is pretty darn long.

As for that great perk of teaching – holidays – some bureaucrats in the Ministry of Education who probably never went near a school since they left, decided that teachers needed to do more and so, more often than not, teachers get called back to do all sorts of things that make bureaucrats behind desk happy. It even reached stage where one of my uncles who was a teacher at the Institute of Technological Education (ITE) found that he had to apply for the standard two weeks of leave like the private sector because holidays for teachers was essentially redundant.

It goes without saying that my teaching career was short lived. I took an $800 a month pay cut to return to the private sector. My resentment towards sitting at a desk started when I was faced with the very prospect of having to sit in committee meetings. One of the worst memories was Valentines Day, where the unmarried head of department decided to hold the rest of us, who happened to be married, should stay back for a meeting, which only took five hours. The only person who was let off this marathon meeting was the only other unmarried person in the English department.

I bring up this rant about my inglorious days in the school system because it reflects something many simply don’t see when it comes to jobs that are off the beaten path. For those of us in corporate jobs, we tend to look at anyone who isn’t in a job like hours as having it easy. We think of teachers as having lots of free time. We think of construction workers as having it easy because they don’t face office pressures. Most worryingly we look at entrepreneurs and the self-employed and we get the idea that these guys have it good because they don’t work standard hours and somehow end up richer than us, average joes.

Success is very attractive. Who doesn’t want to be successful? Whenever we see someone with the signs of success (the right car, the right home etc), we become caught up in the good side of their lives.

One of the most prominent examples of our attraction to success was best seen in the 80s and 90s, when boxing was dominated by “Iron Mike Tyson.” Mr. Tyson was the dominant fighter of his generation. He was so dominant in the early part of his career that he had effectively won before setting foot in the ring because he terrified his opponents. One of the most memorable fights was against Michael Spinks, which was lasted all of 93 seconds. For that fight, Mr. Tyson bagged some US$20 million.

Couldn’t believe that anyone could earn that much for 93 seconds. Then, my uncle (the one who recently retired from ITE) made the point that the average boxer has to train two hours a day more than what the average person works.

That stuck with me and although Mr. Tyson has since retired from boxing, I thought it was worth looking at the way he trained. Thanks to YouTube, I found two videos which talk about the way he trained. To say that it is beyond belief is an understatement. The man woke up at 4am everyday to go for a three to four mile run every day. He did something like 500 push ups a day. I struggle to get 50 done every other day.

 

One of the more interesting videos on the way Mr. Tyson trained can be found in the link below. Note the expression of the guy’s face after going through the calisthenics portion of the day and that’s just a single day. Mr. Tyson trained like that daily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NOzRshvQzE

 

Getting up and making yourself train like that requires iron determination and focus. I think about the way I have to push myself to get through my four-minute morning work out or how 5 BX in the army was a challenge. Whatever I went through was nothing compared to what Mr. Tyson went through every day.

Sure, he had the hot chicks, great mansions and cars and at one point over US$300 million. That was the good part that everyone saw. We got excited by the way he could demolish people in a matter of seconds and earn millions.

Nobody saw the training and the hard work and the type of training he had to go through. Let’s also not forget that for every Mike Tyson, there many more going through this type of training who will never earn a percentage of what he made and many probably end up with severe brain damage.

What is true of top-level boxers is also true of entrepreneurs. You may not have to sit in a cubicle for eight-hours a day but you actually have to work very hard just to stay afloat. People won’t see that and should you fail (which is more likely than not), you’ll get a lot of people, including friends and family, take joy in telling you that you made stupid choices. Just like it takes a special something in boxer to get up after he’s taken a beating, an entrepreneur needs to know how to get up from taking a beating.

So, just because someone doesn’t go through the same things you do, it doesn’t mean that they have it easy. If anything, they could be going through things you would never want to go through. Always be sympathetic to people struggling to get by.