Doing the Job

When a friend of mine was recently faced with a challenging assignment, he responded with a phrase that many of us have used and all of us have heard: “Well, I’ll do my best! Angels can do no more.” I later reflected upon this phrase when my friend had great difficulty in meeting the requirements of his task, and I wondered if he had not predisposed himself to failure. Thinking back on all the times that I had heard this little phrase used, I found that, in every case, “I’ll do my best” had been a prelude to ineffectual effort. These cases suggest that people know when their best will not be good enough. Some lines attributed to President John Taylor focused my reflections even more clearly. While I have heard some variants, the essential quotation is as follows: “The easiest way to fail is to do your best; the surest way to succeed is to do the job.”

I would hesitate to elaborate on this theme before some groups, but my confidence in those assembled here tonight is such that I can honestly discuss with you what “doing the job” implies. To begin with, it suggests the need to define what the “job” is. For most of us, that is surprisingly hard to do. We either set arbitrary limits— limits that ignore the meaningful context of which the task is a part—or we pursue each ramification endlessly and never concentrate our efforts on that which can be effectively considered separate from the task’s surroundings. This last is the particular temptation of the educated, who have taught themselves to be sensitive to nuance and suggestion and who often find a provocative hint more irresistible than a prosaic fact.

In this context of adequately defining the job, I have often remembered Raymond Adams. That name probably means little to most of you, but over a lifetime as a scholar in American literature, Adams assembled more information about Henry David Thoreau than all other researchers put together. Because I wrote my own doctoral dissertation on Thoreau, I was acutely conscious of the mass of information Adams had assembled, and along with other potential Thoreau scholars, I eagerly awaited his definitive biography. It never came. Professor Adams became the captive of his own material: he traced casual references with unflagging dedication and finally became preoccupied with scholarly trivia. At his death, those with lesser background—but with the ability to discriminate and define—turned his material into significant scholarship.

Yet snuffling scholarship is not the final temptation that many of us have to resist. We can more easily become victims of the rather unctuous attitude summed up in the following aphorism: “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.” Falling prey to this attitude is often the peculiar temptation of professionals. Having learned—usually painfully—the necessity of exacting effort, professionals become undiscriminating in lavishing equal attention on all facets of their task. They simply have no best; they can rise to no challenge. Their best effort becomes their usual effort, and they lose the power to distinguish clearly between that which must be done with exquisite skill and that which is simply preliminary.

Rather than being applied generally, this maxim—“Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well”—could better be used to suggest that every effort should be directly related to function. Rough carpentry will suit its function better than a cabinetmaker’s precision under certain circumstances, and we should not expect to be praised for failing to see this difference. Our real problem, of course, is that we are failing to define our job. Precise definition requires us to assess our priorities, an assessment that demands fastidious effort some of the time and something less than that in much of what we do. A true artisan is never a fuss-budget.

If what I am saying here becomes an excuse for widespread carelessness, I am failing doubly. I not only stumble as a speaker, but I become justification for sloppiness. Perhaps I can make explicit what I mean by recounting one of the great lessons of my youth.

My father had a small coal mine. On Saturdays and during summer, the delight of my life was working at his side. One of my earliest memories is helping him prepare the charges of explosives—what coal miners call “shots”—that had to be set off each night after the miners had left work. Drilling the long holes and wrapping the tubes of mud that would be tamped into the hole after the charge was set were tasks my father let me try under very relaxed circumstances. The hole did not need to be bored perfectly, and the tamping could be used even if a youngster could not get all the cylinders the same size. But when the time came to attach the blasting cap to a fuse and carefully insert it in a stick of dynamite, the whole tenor of the operation changed. Gone was the easy, relaxed manner of our earlier effort. My father’s concentration was intense and unremitting. He did not speak, and his deft hands worked with infinite patience and precision in setting the charge. I can still remember the extraordinary attention we gave to checking the long fuse to be sure that no breaks could cause a misfire. With a surgeon’s skill, my father inserted the cap and fuse into the dynamite and pushed it into the prepared hole with consummate care. Somehow I knew, without being told explicitly, that there were certain mistakes you never made once, and I learned the difference between the real job of setting explosives, which required skill and concentration brought to their acme, and those preliminaries that had to be done but did not need to exhaust anyone’s best effort prematurely. To this day, my respect for dynamite is wholesome, but I am not intimidated by it. I can use explosives with confidence because I understand precisely the carelessness they will not forgive, and I understand equally what I need not worry about in working with them.

If our present occupation lacks the dramatic intensity of using dynamite, it is surely composed both of elements that demand our most discriminating effort and those that draw mainly on the lower brain centers. When we know that difference, when we use both spinal column and cerebellum appropriately, we are learning to define our job.

What is implied by “doing” the job we have just defined probably deserves a few moments of discussion. Most teachers know the frustration of having students come to them and complain that they put far more effort into one assignment than another and yet got the same grade for both. When I was teaching freshman English, I occasionally had students come up after class, two papers in hand, to inform me, just a mite accusingly, that they had spent four hours on the first theme, yet received a “C,” and had spent only one hour on the second and received the same grade. How could I tell these students, tenderly, that their minds were in neutral for three-quarters of the time they supposedly spent on the first theme? Doing has only an incidental reference to time spent. In a sense that goes far beyond the superficial competition of sports, winning is everything. No explanation for failure—no matter how detailed and persuasive—is a substitute for achievement. The Lord lets us see this clearly in the account of the prophet Elijah’s development.

As 1 Kings 19 opens, Elijah has just had his dramatic confrontation with the priests of Baal. What appeared to be a total triumph was suddenly dashed by Jezebel’s ruthless determination to have Elijah killed. Running for his life, Elijah went first to Beersheba and then an additional day’s journey into the wilderness. Exhausted, discouraged, and overwhelmed by his plight, he pleads with the Lord to take away his life, for he feels that he is an utter failure. The Lord allows him to rest and provides the food needed to get him ready for his long walk to Mount Horeb. Arriving there, Elijah lodges in a cave and awaits instructions. Soon the voice of the Lord comes to him and asks, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1 Kgs. 19:9). Elijah almost blubbers as he pours forth his explanation. He recounts how hard he has worked in the Lord’s cause, describes how rebellious the children of Israel have become, and finishes by declaring that he alone still serves the Lord in all the land.

The Lord then provides a little demonstration that has universal significance. Suggesting that Elijah go forth and stand upon the mount, the Lord has a mighty wind send huge rocks crashing down the mountain. Elijah braces himself to see the Lord in the wind, but the Lord is not there. After the wind comes an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there is a fire; the Lord is not in the fire. After the fire, there comes a still small voice. Finally, Elijah recognizes that the Lord is not going to appear to him in some dazzling display, but he has something simple and profound to communicate. As Elijah wraps his face in his mantle and stands in the entrance of his cave, the Lord says once more, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1 Kgs. 19:13). The question is the same one he has asked earlier, but now Elijah is almost ready to hear it. Not quite, however, because he gives the same explanation he did earlier. At that point, the Lord simply details for him what he is to do and then comments, almost incidentally, that Elijah need not think he is alone. In fact, he is only one of seven thousand who are equally devout in Israel. The Lord always has resources to do his work, but we, like Elijah, can grow only by doing, and not by explaining.

Real doing takes more than simple commitment. Commitment without skill is a dubious compliment to what we are attempting to accomplish. Yet even as we talk of skill, we must make some distinctions. For example, I have developed the hand/eye coordination that allows me to perform certain tasks with confidence. Yet this ability can be no more than a telestial, mechanical expression of my training that hardly does me great credit. Monkeys have been taught intricate tasks; I need to bring something more to my training than dexterity. I must add will to my skill if it is going to be significant. If my efforts are going to take on their finest meaning, I must be more than an instrument. Yet even as I understand what I am doing, see it in its context and adapt my efforts accordingly, I am still short of that wholeness of effort suggested by “doing.” If I am able and willing, I must also be imaginative.

Imagination unites the doing with the defining. It not only brings my mechanical skills to bear, but refocuses them in the midst of a task and keeps my efforts under the continuing surveillance of what needs to be accomplished from moment to moment. One may have imagination without competence, which inevitably results in acute frustration. But skill without imagination is means without end. One can never develop enough mechanical skill alone to become professional. Only an effort synthesized by competence, will, and imagination can display the integration that is always the hallmark of professional effort.

May I conclude by reciting some lines that are especially important to me. I have been privileged in my life to know the special satisfaction reserved for the craftsperson. Many of you here tonight unite that sense with its ultimate expression in truly professional endeavor. If we combine the best of two worlds, we should never forget the simple manual skills that are at the base of our fulfillment. What I am about to read from the 38th chapter of Ecclesiasticus (KJV) will have special meaning to those who bring more than theoretical ability to their tasks.

The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.

How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks?

He giveth his mind to make furrows; and is diligent to give the kine fodder.

So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboureth night and day; and they that cut and grave seals, and are diligent to make great variety, and give themselves to counterfeit imagery, and watch to finish a work:

The smith also sitting by the anvil, and considering the iron work, the vapour of the fire wasteth his flesh, and he fighteth with the heat of the furnace; the noise of the hammer and the anvil is ever in his ears, and his eyes look still upon the pattern of the thing that he maketh; he setteth his mind to finish his work, and watcheth to polish it perfectly.

So doth the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number;

He fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over; and he is diligent to make clean the furnace;

All these trust to their hands; and every one is wise in his work.

Without these cannot a city be inhabited; and they shall not dwell where they will, nor go up and down:

They shall not be sought for in publick counsel, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges’ seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken.

But they will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft.