Feb 01, 2010
Ed Mullen
The role of work in our lives has changed, and with it our expectations for what we want out of it and a growing understanding of our responsibilities in it.
Over the years, I’ve grappled with the role of work in my life. I have wanted/expected/demanded a lot out of my working life, but knowing how to achieve a good balance is elusive. It’s something that I continually adjust and refine in practice. Finding contentment with the role of work in one’s life is an ongoing series of experiments, assessments, negotiations and rewards.
Jul 25, 2011
Ed Mullen
If I look back at my career so far, one of the things that has been most helpful is my seeming inability to stick to the scope of the project at hand.
That doesn’t mean I’m a pushover when I’m prodded to deliver more than originally agreed upon. It means I pretty much always stick my nose where I haven’t been asked. Not forcefully, of course. Just out of inquisitiveness.
You know those moments, don’t you? When you feel that the thing that needs to be done isn’t exactly what you’ve been asked to do. It’s a bit beyond that. It’s the thing that others think isn’t really necessary. But you know, if you just did it, they’d see it’s value and it will make everything better. You can always just skip it, but sometimes it’s an opportunity.
Dec 21, 2010
Ed Mullen
2010 has been very hard for many people. But for me, I’m incredibly thankful for a year filled with amazing collaborations.
From my work in D.C. on HealthCare.gov to the smallest updates for long-time clients, this has been a year when my goal of working with great people doing important work in the world has been fully realized. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunities I’ve had this year. I want to take a moment to thank the people I’ve had the good fortune to work with…
Jan 14, 2010
Ed Mullen
A growing disconnect between what we put in and what we get out, along with a decreasing ability to verify results, is fertile ground for anxiety and discontent.
Recently reading through an old book of Kahlil Gibran, I read a passage that really felt like it was out of a different era, which of course it was. Gibran was taking about the differences between city and rural life: “We are wealthier than the villagers in silver or gold, but they are richer in spirit. What we sow we reap not; they reap what they sow.”
What caught my attention was not a pastoral yearning for the simple life of the countryside that was never really that simple. It was not a life-lesson set among country folk or the familiar aphorism “You reap what you sow.” What struck me was the idea that at one point not too long ago people lived by a simple system in which the work put in had a direct and measurable correlation to the benefits received from that labor.