Thursday, October 21, 2010

Spreadsheets or people: that was the decision I presented to you a few weeks ago as I traced the contour of my career and wondered, years from now, where it would lead. On the face of it, it was a grim choice, with a snoozefest on one end, emotional mortification on the other, and a general sense of being cornered, like discovering you’ve depleted all your skips in Pandora just as a Michael Bublé song begins.

Turns out it wasn’t a grim choice at all. Far from it, in fact, and in a moment of clarity today I realized why the human race, rather than Excel, won out. It’s actually been winning for a while now, despite my proclivity for avoiding people, and here’s why. For one thing, anything I can do in a spreadsheet could easily be shipped overseas or tasked to a computer. In a sense, Excel is a foregone conclusion, a kind of aftermath in a war of flesh against silicon. Let’s be honest here: no matter how many formulas I jam into a spreadsheet, I can never hope to match the computational power of a solar-powered calculator, let alone a modern processor.

Relationships, then, become precious, and shepherding data suddenly takes a backseat to investing in social currency. But how to embrace all this when connecting with people is such a draining proposition? It’s simple, really. I know what parts of my career I enjoy. I like figuring out how stuff works. I also like fixing problems. When you wrap people in the context of these two things, well, there’s your escape hatch, with a clearer course set before you and relief–above all, relief–that your compass was working all along.