(This is not about sports, just FYI, although I’ve been thinking a lot about ballplayers who are pros in every way except getting paid, especially when it comes to college football. But that’s for another time.)
One of my favorite podcasters is Brian Koppelman — co-creator of “Rounders” and “Billions,” among other wonderful things — and his favorite guest is the marketing guru and author Seth Godin. They spend most of their time talking about how to figure out what you ought to be doing in your life and how to make it happen, despite all the obstacles (many of them self-inflicted) in the way.
Their latest conversation has an extended riff on the differences between an amateur and a professional. I was happy to hear Godin say basically the same thing I tell people about the key distinction: Pros do the work even when they don’t feel like it.
I’ve been lucky enough to love pretty much every job I’ve ever had. But there have been days on all those jobs when I would’ve rather been anywhere else — someone I cared about was sick, or I was mad at my boss, or my friends were out doing something fun, or (this happened in my 20s more than I’d like to admit) I was hung over.
This is even more tempting when you work for yourself — there’s no one to yell at you if you roll back over and go to sleep. (Although, trust me, once you check you bank balance, you will yell at yourself later.)
If you’re trying to jump-start a creative career — if you’ve always wanted to be a writer, say — those first few weeks can be a blast. So many ideas! The words just flow! And then, at some point, there comes a day when you just stare at the screen and the words feel encased in ice. It is not fun at all. Maybe it happens two or three days in a row. Maybe a week. And then you have to decide if this is what you really want to do.
I do not always provide 100 percent peak performance on those gray days. But I show up and do my best to get something done. I learned from the best. My mom was a waitress for the last 18 years of her working life. She was in her 50s and 60s when she worked there. She ached every morning when she got up. But she got dressed and had her coffee and went in every morning because that’s what a pro does.
Watching her work, and listening to her talk about it, taught me a key thing about being a pro. At the Denny’s where she worked, cooks and servers constantly called in sick or just didn’t show up — they’d work a week or two and just vanish. A lot of people quit the moment they found out it was hard work. My mom was a fantastic waitress. But she also got better shifts and more leeway on the job because she stuck around when so many others didn’t.
This, to me, is the great value in being a pro. You might think you’re not as good as a lot of the people around you. But if you stick with it, a lot of those people are going to give up. Your competition will just fall away.
And all those days you do the work when you don’t feel like it? They start to accumulate. Pretty soon you’ve built something you’re proud of. Maybe something that can support you for the rest of your life.