The Context
The advantage of learning to play an instrument at a young age is, it grows your tolerance for executing boring, repetitive, tasks, in complete isolation, that have minimal immediate payoff. Ask any guitar player you know. Sitting in your room strumming the same stupid three chords for two hours straight until your fingers are raw doesn't exactly earn you social currency in high school or college. But when you enter the workforce as a young adult and your asshole boss drops some dreadful assignment into your lap two days before the deadline, you're sure glad you spent all those hours shredding in your bedroom as a kid. Because in that moment, the work is not beneath you. It's just the reality of what needs to be done. Whereas most people would feel like running away.
The Tool
Joydraging
JOYDRAGING -- The ability to tolerate boring, repetitive, isolating tasks that don’t have an immediate payoff
We all have our own version of this capability, whether we’re musically inclined or not. Everyone has some activity they enjoy that the rest of the world complains about. Some pain they can handle more than most. Some work that hurts them less than it hurts others. What’s yours? This is not only a gift, it's an advantage. It's an immunity and an inoculation against the forces and situations that would make most people give up along the way, or worse yet, not even start in the first place. It’s funny, there are numerous clinical studies about how children who practice music, martial arts, meditation and other activities have increased intelligence, higher test scores, better memory capacity, greater organizational skills, and so on. All of which are beneficial, but let’s not overlook the invaluable skill of being able to tolerate boring, repetitive, isolating tasks that don’t have an immediate payoff.
The Rest
This tool is not the kind of thing most people put on their resumes, but maybe it should be. In a world where everyone is smart and talented and charismatic, why not differentiate yourself through your ability to suffer through the monotony of the work and come out on the other side creating real value for yourself and others? In fact, imagine how useful you would be to an organization if your team members knew they could confidently hand things off to you that would normally drive them to drink? What pain can you handle more than most, and how could you use that to create real value?
The Benefits
Make yourself an essential player of any new team
Build your reputation as a dependable person who can handle mundane but important work
Develop immunity and inoculation against forces and situations that would make most people give up
Suffer through a monotony of work and come out on the other side creating real value