The paycheck from your first job is small. The habit of showing up for it isn’t.

RESILIENCE

WHAT THIS MEANS

The money from a first job is not the main thing it pays you. What you are building is the ordinary ability to be somewhere on time and do the work when you would rather not, and that ability carries into everything afterwards. Wages rise later; the habit has to be built now, while it is cheap. Plenty of people never build it and spend years working around the gap.

Treat the small job as practice for the one you want. Arrive early, finish the shift properly, leave the place better than you found it.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

What did your first small job build besides money?

MORE IN DISCIPLINE, WORK & STANDARDS

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.