In thankless jobs like IT Support, it helps my motivation if I have something to strive for. I want a goal to look back on and feel I’ve accomplished something.<\/p>\n
The problem with my chosen career is when I do a great job, there is nothing to show for it. When I work hard, solve problems and delight customers, I have nothing to show for it. ((Save a pile of Thank You emails.))<\/p>\n
I have no product at the end of the day I’ve produced with my own hands. I have no sales figure I’ve hit and I’ve not made the company any money. ((In fact, IT Support is considered as a necessary evil because we don’t<\/strong> generate any money for the company.))<\/p>\n I’ve said for years my ideal day is when I come to work and sit at my desk and do nothing for 8 hours then go home. That means all the systems are working perfectly and all of our customers have completely working computers.<\/p>\n In the seven years I’ve done this, it hasn’t happened yet.<\/p>\n Because of this, it helps to have something to strive towards so I can look back at the end of a long day where I feel I accomplished nothing and say at least I did ____.<\/p>\n In this case, it’s the number of tickets closed.<\/p>\n Each morning every technician in the company receives a report of closed tickets across the company. We receive a daily closed ticket breakdown over the past two weeks. This is interesting and helps me realize why I’m so tired some days ((18 tickets! No wonder I was so sleepy by 5:30.))<\/p>\n But the real genius in the report comes on the following page. This page provides a leaderboard of technicians across the entire company sorted by average tickets closed per day.<\/p>\n This is where I draw my motivation.<\/p>\n Everyday, I strive to stay in the top 10 of the company. I’ve been as high as number 4 with the CSA ((Help Desk)) technicians way ahead of my with double-digit closes per day.<\/p>\n As it stands, I usually come in at between 6 and 7 tickets per day. This is where I draw my motivation from. I want to be at the top of that list every single morning when it comes out. I want to rank higher than every technician in my building. I want to outrank every technician in the field.<\/p>\n I want to be at the top of that list.<\/p>\n This list motivates me to get up and try to complete one more ticket per day. It causes me to work harder when all I want to do is sit at my desk.<\/p>\n The list pushes me forwards and provides some context for my day. This is the most important thing for me, as a technician with no clear measurement of what I spend my days doing.<\/p>\n This list brings meaning and a sense of accomplishment to my 45 hour work week.<\/p>\n