Apply for the position as head of government

It's summer. It's vacation time. It is almost, but not quite, even warm outside.

For those who at last can enjoy a break from their hard work, these are good times. After many moons of sweat and toil, there's finally a slim chance for something as mythological as a sleep-in. A slow afternoon. An evening not haunted by the fast approaching workmorning after.

It's that time of year. For those who work.

For those unemployed, on the other hand, it's business as usual. This time of year is like any other time of year: still unemployed. Vacation is, after all, defined in opposition to being at work, and just like any dichotomy it becomes brutally pointless to reduce it to one word. Without workdays no vacation days, and without vacation days no workdays.

There are only noworkdays.

In an ambition to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy going on vacation, unemployed are encouraged by unemployment agencies to apply for jobs. Not just the one job, but many, to increase the odds. Ideally as many as possible, for the same reason.

Which makes sense on an individual level. A person applying for one (1) job has half the chance compared to a person who applies for two (2) jobs. Even less of a chance compared to a person who applied for three (3). It becomes strange, however, when this same strategy is used by a large number of people, as the number of jobs don't increase at the same rate as the number of applications. Seen on a systemic level, this paradoxically leads to more work for those who are already employed, as more applications has to be administered. The more unemployed applying for more jobs they for reasons of pure arithmetics can't get, the more workhours wasted on wasted work applications.

Which, to be sure, is wasted effort on the part of everyone involved.

Since you are an attentive reader, you have already noticed the title of this post. you probably already know where this is going. It is wasteful to waste energy on nothing, after all, and it's even more wasteful to write applications that won't be read by anyone. It is, by definition, be better to do things that have effect than to do things than don't, and thus I encourage you to do just that:

Apply for the position as head of government.

Now, at this point you might want to object that it is impossible to get that job by applying for it, since it's not a job following the ordinary rules of employment, and that the social spheres from which potential heads of government are chosen are rather hard to get into. Two objections that are completely true. However, it's not about one individual here, but about many of them. It's a numbers game. One particular person applying for the job won't do any particular difference. But if many people do it many times, the sheer number of applications becomes a message hard to ignore. Whether or not if anyone actually reads them or not.

Which has a greater effect than writing an application for a job that is just as impossible to get.

Thus, if you are not enjoying your summer vacation this summer, and find yourself in the paradoxical situation of working very hard at being unemployed - apply for the position as head of government. One time, two times, three times - for as long as your are encouraged to write as many applications as possible.

It's never a bad thing to show initiative, forwardness and innovativeness in the competitive modern job market, after all. -

Originally published June 24, 2014