The Job That Can Make You Very Successful.
There are any number of jobs and professions we can pursue, both blue collar and white collar; sales or service; highly physical or highly intellectual. Each one of these has its own merits and drawbacks. However, there is one job which is less job or profession and more calling and lifestyle. It is both blue collar and white collar, sales and service, and physical and intellectual. It is also the profession that has produced some of the most successful people in a very wide variety of pursuits.
What is it?
Farming.
Over the last 150 years, the number of farmers has fallen dramatically as more people move to cities away from the land. It has gone from the top profession on the globe to one of the least pursued. And yet farmers are disproportionately represented in senior positions in companies and governments. Until very recently, the top executives at Microsoft, for example were almost all the children of farmers.
A large number of American presidents have been farmers including George Washington, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter and the Bush family.
There have also been many farmers who became astronauts including Donald Slayton, who was on the original Project Mercury in 1958, the first U.S. human space flight, and Chris Hadfield who recently was the commander of the International Space Station.
“Agriculture was the first occupation of man, and as it embraces the whole earth, it is the foundation of all other industries.” – Edward W. Stewart
What is it about farming that creates so many achievers? As mentioned above, one of its main characteristics is the all-encompassing nature of the duties on a farm. You need to be able to do almost anything and do it with very limited resources.
Blue collar? Drive a tractor, stack bales of hay, milk cows, repair a fence.
White collar? Calculate fertilizer, crop yields and fuel costs. Negotiate the sale of your produce or the purchase of machinery.
Sales? Sell your livestock or crops.
Service? Maintain your fields, feed your animals, know how to repair ANYTHING with baling wire.
Physical? Fuel your machines, stack bales of hay, distribute feed.
Intellectual? Know the best times to harvest, water, feed, milk, vaccinate, plant, etc.
“A farm is a manipulative creature. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later. The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can’t is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die. Its blackmail, really.” – Kristin Kimball
As you can see, the list of tasks on a farm seems endless and a good farmer needs to know how to do them all. If not, the consequences can be very serious. They need to be able to improvise and learn very quickly as help is often very far away.
Farmers are required to get up early and work hard the entire day just to keep the farm going. All of these characteristics are what make farmers so successful in the business world. They are used to dealing with mini crises all day long that must be dealt with properly or there are repercussions.
Think about being in space and having something go wrong. Would you rather have someone who has read about how to repair a solar panel or a rocket engine, or someone who regularly repaired all manner of things on a farm by figuring them out and making them work. Add in the fact that in space, no help is coming to your rescue and the answer becomes much clearer.
“You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Farmers must also be able to plan far ahead and understand that the decisions they are making today will affect their results many days and years into the future. This can be as simple as planting a grain crop that will be ready to harvest in a few months to a tree nursery that will not be ready for many years. This kind of long-term thinking is vital in business today and the ability to see that far into the future is not an easy skill to acquire.
“Life on a farm is a school of patience; you can’t hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.” – Henri Alain
So, if you did not grow up on a farm, which most of us did not, how do we develop that sense of ingenuity, hard work and persistence that makes farmers so successful? We can start by looking at every challenge that we have not as a major difficulty but as a puzzle to solve. As we exercise our problem-solving muscles, we will get better at it like anything else. We can continue to work at it until we reach an acceptable solution. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just a workable result. We should also ensure that the solution will work in the short term and the long term.
Once we view our day to day challenges as puzzles to be solved and not difficulties, we will build persistence and a strong work ethic, even if we have never milked a cow or driven a tractor.