Over the New Year holiday I visited the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg and saw people who must really love their work. . Apart from being amazed at the number of small children that could be crammed into one small warehouse, I was primarily impressed with the details. It wasn't simply the scale of the project that was impressive but the attention people had paid to all the small things. |
The signals along the track turn to red and the trains stop. When the road vehicles slow to a stop, their brake lights glow. Milimetrically small advertising hoardings having changing electronic pictures on them, fans in the Hamburg football stadium have flags that tey wave periodically. On top of al that there are the mini-scenes within the different worlds; the frogmen diving a river to find the corpse; Pippi Longstocking lifting a horse in a village; gnomes working in a mountain cave; a couple making love in the middle of a field of sunflowers.
Watching some of the workers bent over their desks painting the tiny figures, you wonder what drives them. They are investing time to provide details that most of the visitors might never spot. Presumably they enjoy what they do - given some of their unergonomic desk positions, I hope they aren't being forced to work their. I'm guessing they even love what they do and get a kick out of including the little details into their worlds. Maybe people spotting the scuba-diving cows makes the workers smile as well. Yes, you could argue that they must simply be detail-focussed people and I would agree in part - they could never cope with the job otherwise. However, the level of intricacy goes beyond mere attention, moving into a passionate love of detail.
Which bits of your job do you love doing? What is there in your normal day or week or month that gets you interested more than the rest of the drudgery? Yes, the MW people need to make sure that the trains all run to the schedule and don't crash, that lights come on when 'night time' happens so that the basics of the wonderland work. They could stop there, but actually its all the exciting little extras that make the place so fascinating for everyone from 3 to 83, judging by the rapt attention of the visitors I saw.
Lots has been written about finding meaning in our work and maybe at the start of the year we need to re-examine what we do. Can we find an analogy to painting today's person faster than yesterday's, making it a neater job, with more colourful clothes? Maybe there are little scenarios we can include that make people smile or big thigs we can create that make people gasp. How can we relate differently to our boss, our colleagues or our visitors in order to make them feel better or for us to enjoy our days more? Its true what people say that the more you put in the more you get out; it might mean we have to give a little extra but isn't that worth it? Iif we enjoy our work more, how much more will that contribute to our happiness and mental well-being?
Watching some of the workers bent over their desks painting the tiny figures, you wonder what drives them. They are investing time to provide details that most of the visitors might never spot. Presumably they enjoy what they do - given some of their unergonomic desk positions, I hope they aren't being forced to work their. I'm guessing they even love what they do and get a kick out of including the little details into their worlds. Maybe people spotting the scuba-diving cows makes the workers smile as well. Yes, you could argue that they must simply be detail-focussed people and I would agree in part - they could never cope with the job otherwise. However, the level of intricacy goes beyond mere attention, moving into a passionate love of detail.
Which bits of your job do you love doing? What is there in your normal day or week or month that gets you interested more than the rest of the drudgery? Yes, the MW people need to make sure that the trains all run to the schedule and don't crash, that lights come on when 'night time' happens so that the basics of the wonderland work. They could stop there, but actually its all the exciting little extras that make the place so fascinating for everyone from 3 to 83, judging by the rapt attention of the visitors I saw.
Lots has been written about finding meaning in our work and maybe at the start of the year we need to re-examine what we do. Can we find an analogy to painting today's person faster than yesterday's, making it a neater job, with more colourful clothes? Maybe there are little scenarios we can include that make people smile or big thigs we can create that make people gasp. How can we relate differently to our boss, our colleagues or our visitors in order to make them feel better or for us to enjoy our days more? Its true what people say that the more you put in the more you get out; it might mean we have to give a little extra but isn't that worth it? Iif we enjoy our work more, how much more will that contribute to our happiness and mental well-being?
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