Never Come Up Empty-Handed

If you’ve done honest work, you should be able to back it up.

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When you are tasked with fixing a problem for someone else, and things are not going so well, it’s best to keep a log of all the things you tried or looked into, like a lab journal. Two reasons why:

1) Even if you can’t solve the issue, if you can enumerate many instances of “here’s what I tried and here’s what happened, here’s something weird I noticed,” it might spur your supervisor to come up with a suggestion of what you might look into next.

2) It will also demonstrate how much honest work you put forth trying to solve the problem.

It’s crucial to recognize that working on a project for an extended period of time and not having anything to show for it is a hallmark of a lazy, dishonest, or incapable person – and such people are everywhere. They thrive in low-visibility environments like mold in a dark, damp basement. They gravitate towards projects that could reasonably not pan out, where they can maintain the perception of pulling their weight while continually failing to deliver real results.

You may not be a member of the mold, but if you find yourself in a situation resembling its natural habitat, then you need to actively demonstrate your work ethic, integrity, and capability with tangible receipts. If you’ve done honest work, you should be able to back it up. You can’t expect people to take your word at face value. You need to prove that your work survives when it’s exposed to the sunlight.

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