2010 Issue

32 to the extent of not really caring about keep- ing their job or getting ahead in life. You cannot succeed with the attitude to do just enough to get by. Giving a damn requires you to look a little further at what you are doing. It requires you to anticipate problems, consider alternatives, go the extra mile and sometimes even work late. Sometimes giving a damn is just showing up. It has been said that 90% of life is just showing up. That is, those who merely get out of bed each day and go to work are the ones that have success. To a certain extent, this is true. I am amazed at what I am able to accomplish sometimes simply because I am the only one that bothered to do something. It makes me wonder if everyone else is just lying about what they do or if they are just doing absolutely nothing. A wise man also once told me, “Never settle for mediocrity”. Perhaps you feel that you are not paid enough to care. Perhaps you don’t feel like there is a path for you to get ahead, someone is holding you back or some other excuse. To this, I say if you want to get paid more, if you want to get ahead, start caring more. It’s a chicken or the egg kind of thing. If money or getting ahead is not sufficient motivation, perhaps you should consider the fact that you like to eat or you need to provide for others around you. A quote from a popular move that I watched once goes something like this, “Sometimes I do what I want to do, the rest of the time I do what I have to do”. If that is all there is to motivate you in life, then perhaps it should be enough. In the freemarket, I find that you get paid about what you areworth. If youwant to be successful, work really hard and do it for a long time. Upon undertaking a particularly difficult venture at one point in my life, my father gave me this advice, “When times get hard, when you feel like giving up, when it looks like thewholeworld is going to come in upon you,…”, and pointing his finger at me he said, “then you work!”. Good work requires giving a damn. Tip of the Spear Thismay be themost important engineering se- cret I have to share, especially with the economy and the world upside down as it is. Consider the construction of a spear. On one end there is a point. On the other is a handle. The pointy end of the spear gets bloody. The handle end of the spear is the safe end. TIP OF THE SPEAR continued from page 31 In the engineering world, there are many positions in which you can put yourself. You can choose to do something safe and easy. You can choose to stay out of the lime light. Before you choose, you should ask yourself one question, “Will this road take me to where I want to end up?” If you choose the safe end of the spear youmay have a job, maybe. If instead, you choose the bloody end of the spear, to fight your way up the ladder, to do the really hard stuff, you will not only likely have a good job; you will be in control of your own destiny. I will take that which is most difficult. I will take the stress. I will run to the trouble. I will take the bloody end any day because there I am in control of my own destiny. I will take the tip of the spear. Ben Davis, P.E., is a Vice President and the Chief Operating Officer, Van Boerum and Frank Associates, and a founding partnerofHVACSolutions–innovativeHVACdesignsoftware. HeisagraduateoftheBrighamYoungUniversity.Hisexperience spans over 17 years with various HVAC projects. S I ZZZ IUHHGRPOHJDO EL] 6RPHWLPHV WKH EHVW ZD\ WR ZLQ D ODZVXLW %XVLQHVV SURWHFWLRQ SODQV VWDUWLQJ DW SHU PRQWK 3URWHFW ZKDW \RX KDYH EXLOW LV WR SUHYHQW RQH