Life is Easier with a BS Detector

Warning: There is cursing below.

Of all the literature I have read that’s relevant to joy and satisfaction at work, there are two books that stand out. The first is On Bullshit by former Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt. It’s an essay…well, about BS in our culture. Short version: There’s a lot of it. 

The second book is Dying for a Paycheck by Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. It’s about the negative health consequences (e.g., burnout and stress that harm our cardiovascular systems) of the ways most organizations function. 

The books are related because the harmful stress we experience at work is inversely proportional to the sensitivity of our BS detectors.  

A friend’s father once explained the secret to his success as a salesperson this way: “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and I’m definitely a bullshitter.”

He could close more deals because he was able to cut through what’s real and what’s not. And his BS detector meant that he could avoid spending time and effort on deals that would never materialize. 

In On Bullshit, Frankfurt writes that “the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.” 

Does that sound like a lot of the meetings you’ve been in?

When we realize that everyone else is basically BSing their way through, perhaps it’s easier to wrestle with our own feelings of inadequacy when we don’t know everything.

My wife doesn’t like that I claim not to have a real job. There are many layers to my claim, but it’s mostly a recognition that most of us—i.e., the people with time to read things like Monday Musings—have BS jobs. 

We aren’t doctors, nurses, teachers, pilots, bricklayers, architects, or death penalty lawyers—the kinds of jobs where there are real, immediate consequences for making a mistake or missing a deadline.   

Working as a police officer is surely a real job, but when I once consulted a city’s police department, I discovered there was plenty of time spent shooting the breeze with the Chief’s staff. One officer kept asking if he could set me up with his daughter. He also discussed the marksman bar he sported on his uniform. (The two may have been related.)   

So, even within real jobs, there’s plenty of BS to go around. 

For most of us, the harmful stress of our jobs doesn’t come from the possibility of real,  immediate, negative consequences of our actions. In reality, if Jerry in Accounting doesn’t get the report by the end of business today, it will probably be fine.  

Instead, much of the stress is self-imposed stress based on what we think the consequences of our actions will be. For example, we fear what Jerry will think of us if we don’t meet the deadline.

I’m sure Jerry is a great guy and super important, but the choice to make his BS our problem is a choice. Jerry probably isn’t stress-worthy. 

Therefore, building a more sensitive BS detector is one step in right-sizing the negative emotional energy we expend at work. And when we do, there’s much more room for joy and satisfaction.