Assessing Your Work Life, Part 1

His obituary opened as follows: “Edward R, (Ted) Steefel, a prominent real estate attorney, instrumental in the creation of the San Francisco Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, in addition to many other landmark developments, died of cancer at age 68 on May 10, 2002.” Many of you probably never heard of Ted, although he was well known in San Francisco as the principal outside counsel for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, during its halcyon days. Ted also was heavily involved in community service during his exceptional career.

Roughly a year before his passing, I had joined Ted’s law firm - Steefel, Levitt & Weiss - with a small cadre of land-use talent. At the time I joined the firm, I did not know of Ted’s cancer prognosis. But it was clear from his appearance that he was not in good health.

We originally had met years before when I, as a upstart land-use attorney, had tangled with the elder gruff, but bighearted Ted over various San Francisco redevelopment projects. Some 15 years my senior, he taught me some things about redevelopment law, while I gave him a lesson or two in politics. All always ended well and we now were law partners.

My own cancer scare began in 1991, with an original “two years to live” prognosis, following an earlier misdiagnosis of a melanoma tumor on my right shoulder. By 2002, I had passed the subsequent “7-year threshold,” which I had been told would be the period in which the original tumor, if metastatic, would have revealed its progeny elsewhere in my body.

People who have lived with cancer often form a special bond. We have the implicit “permission” to talk about our experiences, our fears, and our expectations without being shut out by our “cancer experienced” listeners. And so it was with Ted and me. I would come to his office, close the door, and we inevitably would talk about what really mattered - our lives, our loves, our mortality, and what, if anything, would come next.One day I asked Ted why, in light of his condition, he kept coming into the office. “This is who I am,” he said. One day, in early May, 2002, after sticking my head into Ted’s office to say “Hi,” I headed out to the UCSF Cancer Center for one of my quarterly examinations. My physician found something “suspicious,” so I was scheduled for another surgery.

As I left the building, distracted by this new development and the inevitable “waiting period,” before results were in, I was caught by surprise, as I held the door open to admit a clearly distressed and ailing man. It was Ted. He died in that hospital a few days later.

Two years later, in 2004, I became a Zen Hospice Project volunteer at San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital. I now am 64 years old and beginning my 10th year of hospice volunteer service. Living with dying has become a big part of my life. It also has become one of my life’s greatest gifts. It has allowed me to assess my career as an integral part of my life.

You easily can do the same:

Imagine that you are 95 years old. You are comfortably seated in a rocking chair, in a relaxed state of mind, as you look back at your life. From that vantage point, what would you like your life to have been? What would you have wanted to accomplish? What are the experiences you want to have had?

Ask yourself, what kind of person would you have to be to bring this life about?

How did your career support this outcome?

If you were to have the life which you just imagined, what adjustments would you need to begin now to bring about that outcome? What are you missing that you should incorporate into your life to reach that outcome? How will your work help you get there?

What does your imagined future tell you about where you currently are in your career?

Ted, with terminal cancer, could leave his office and directly enter the hospital in which he would die, because his work was an integral part of his life, a place from which he derived great satisfaction, an end in itself.

In many respects, Ted was a rare individual. He found profound joy in his work. Most people don’t. At the time of Ted’s passing, I was appalled by the thought that the last days of my career, in any way, would be proximate to my death. At that time, I considered that a “successful life” probably best was measured by the length of time between my retirement and the day of my death. What I began to realize, through my work with the dying, was the way that I was approaching my work contained an implicit assumption of its inadequacy.

There really are two problems I am presenting here. The first concerns how to develop an early awareness of career dissatisfaction, so that you are not further robbed of joy and life’s potential. The second concerns the appropriate response to dissatisfaction, once you find it.

Most of the coaching that I do often involves individuals transitioning employment, either moving from one to another firm or changing careers entirely.

The client usually arrives with a comprehensive specific list of reasons for departure and usually a more generic list of what the new situation may have to offer.

Remarkably, The “Big 3” of capitalist incentives - money, status or power - are not prominently under consideration. Rather, values such as satisfaction, fulfillment, growth, respect, appreciation, responsibility, support, collaboration and creativity populate our conversations.

Yet, when I ask clients how they came to their chosen positions, it continues to surprise me how many responses fall in the range of: “At the time, it was the only job available.” “It is what my parents always expected of me.” “I really never gave it that much thought.” “It looked like it would support my desired lifestyle.” In other words, few people enter into a career consciously considering their lives as a whole.

Since most of us will spend almost two-thirds of our life’s waking hours in some sort of “work,” it’s a shame to think of just writing all that time off as a means to an end.

Your work life will best serve you, if you appreciate it for what it is - a relationship. It is a relationship between yourself and the world. And, like all relationships, if you don’t recognize its value, nurture its existence, and develop its potential, you will have very little to show for it. And, equally important, if you harbor the belief that your engagement with your work life will not impact your nonwork life, you are grossly mistaken.

Ask yourself:

How does my work engage me, allowing for my personal growth and development?

How does my work enable me to contribute to my own well-being and the wellbeing of others?

How does my work bring me joy?

How does my work give my life meaning?

Give these questions some consideration in the next few days. Note your reactions in writing. Writing has two obvious benefits. First, it makes your thoughts more concrete. Second, it better preserves your memories in context, that which allows for you to examine your shifting perspectives over time.

We will continue this conversation in my next column.

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I would like to close with a special thanks to all of my readers. This is my 50th Daily Journal column. It has been very fulfilling to engage you over the last few years in conversations not usually found in the legal press. Your responses have proved heartening, insightful and kind. With your continued support you have enabled me to publicly explore important issues that affect our community. Here’s to the next 50!