It requires varied qualities, and to know which is needed taxes attention and calls for masterly discernment... It is intolerable when an office engrosses a man with fixed hours and a settled routine. Those are better that leave a man free to follow his own devices, combining variety with importance.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Careers are chosen by title and lived by texture, and the two documents rarely match. The maxim offers an actual taxonomy: some roles demand courage, some tact, some only rectitude (the easiest), some full-time cleverness (the hardest); some engross a man in routine, others leave him room to move; the best combine variety with importance, and the worst, in one glorious phrase, worry us both here and hereafter. The instruction hiding in the title, try your hand, is the method: sample before you commit, deputise, shadow, take the acting charge, and while there, read the true cost sheet, what the role demands daily, not what it announces annually.
Practice
- Before pursuing any role, interview its texture: ask two holders what a normal Tuesday costs, and listen for what the designation never mentions.
- Take acting charges and stints deliberately; six weeks inside a role teaches what six years of watching it cannot.
- Map roles against your own taxonomy: how much routine can you bear, how much cleverness can you sustain, how much freedom do you require? Mismatch on texture outlasts every other satisfaction.
Use this when
- Use this at every crossroads posting; the prestigious chair with the wrong texture is the commonest mid-career trap.
- Use it designing the second act: the practice you build should fit the taxonomy you have finally learned about yourself.
Ignore this when
- Don't refuse all routine on principle; some seasons of settled work fund the free ones (texture tolerance, not texture worship).
- Don't sample forever; try-your-hand is reconnaissance for commitment, not a substitute for it (maxim 72 closes the file).
A picture of it
The senior teacher wanted the vice-principal's post for a decade, and got its acting charge for one term when the incumbent fell ill. The term was an education of a different kind: the job was timetables, disputes, and circulars, and contained, in three months, four hours of actual teaching. She withdrew her name gracefully when the post was advertised, and built instead the training role she now holds, variety, importance, and classrooms in it. The acting charge cost her a dream and gave her the cost sheet. Cheap, she says now, at twice the price.
Want the work, not the designation. They are sold together and lived separately.