I’m looking for work again, so I’m at home sending applications. It’s lonely work, and this thought is large in my head:

Wouldn’t it be nice to be my own boss?

I’m finding audiobooks from my local library to keep me company while I am alone, working on working. I found one called The Top 10 Distinctions between Bosses and Employees

One of the big distinctions this author points out is that bosses find solutions and employees solve problems.

See, employees have a set of tasks they need to complete. Usually these tasks are well defined. The employee is supposed to figure out how to do those things, and solve any problems in getting them done.

Now, in my last job, I had to supervise big crews of workers. The tasks would be defined and my part was to make sure they were communicated to the crew.

The crew knew how to do each of the things, even though I didn’t.

I couldn’t do their job, but one of the aspects of my job was to make sure that they kept working. With 10 people at a job site, with a week’s worth of work, I’d have to make sure that all 10 people were working on something all the time.

The WORST THING would be to have a person sitting and waiting for something to do.

I’d make sure to walk around and check on what everyone was doing. Not only did I make sure they were doing something right this minute, I’d make sure they knew what to do NEXT. That way they wouldn’t hesitate to move on to the next thing.

If I want to be my own boss, I basically have to do that for myself:

Have a set of things to do, and make sure I keep moving forward on each of the tasks in the most efficient order.

That’s a lot harder.

Having an employee mindset and solving problems means there was someone else who nicely packaged up the problems and gave them to you.

I wish that I had nicely packaged problems for my life, really. This book (which is a lightweight little book) wants to tell me how BOSSES handle that differently.

Yeah.

Basically, the bosses are the ones who create the packaged problems

But, if I am to be my own boss?

I have to be the one deciding the work I need to do and then the one doing it.

It takes a special set of skills to do that.

That little book didn’t talk about that.