7-40 Challenge | Planning Week
I caught myself saying something today that stopped me mid-sentence. I was talking about my work, and I heard myself say I don’t just get to solve problems — I get to take care of people while I do it.
I sat with that, because it explained something I’d never quite been able to name: why I love a job I never planned to have.
I didn’t set out to work in data. I saw myself as a creative — someone who makes things, who helps people. A technical role wasn’t on my list. And for a while I carried a quiet assumption that I’d taken a detour, that the analytical work was a departure from who I really was.
I was wrong about that. The work wasn’t a detour from helping people. It was a vehicle for it. I just didn’t recognize the door when I walked through it.
Here’s what I mean, and I’ll keep it to the shape of the work rather than the specifics.
When you crawl into a hard problem with someone, something happens that doesn’t happen when you just hand them an answer. You isolate where the trouble actually stems from — not where it shows up, but where it starts. You trace it back through the logic, the structure, the places where one thing hands off to another. And to do that, you have to genuinely understand their world, not just your own. They walk you through what they know. You bring what you know. Somewhere in the middle, the two things join, and the problem gives.
That’s the part I love. Not the fix. The joining.
But I want to be honest about what’s actually happening in that exchange, because the noble version — “I selflessly serve, and knowledge flows to those I help” — isn’t the whole truth.
I get better every time I do this. Every problem I climb into that I didn’t create is a problem that stretches my range. The person I’m helping isn’t just receiving. They’re handing me the raw material my own skill sharpens against. I serve them, and the serving is also how I stay sharp. Both things are true, and pretending it’s only the first one would be a lie dressed up as humility.
That’s the difference between showing up to serve and showing up for a paycheck. It isn’t that one is virtuous and the other is greedy — everybody cashes the check. It’s that the person who’s only there for the check leaves the best part on the table. They solve the problem and miss the joining. They never find out that the fastest way to get better at your own craft is to spend it freely on someone else’s problem.
So that’s the thing I noticed today. The spirit you bring to the work changes what the work gives back. Bring the whole of what you’ve got — your skill, your attention, your genuine interest in the other person’s world — and you don’t just solve the thing in front of you. You build the people around you, and they build you right back.
I don’t have that fully figured out. But I know it’s why the work never feels like a detour anymore.
David Willis 