Fear and motivation

By Filip Salomonsson; published on December 06, 2007. Tags: motivation

Here's a guy whose job involves flying around on the outside of a helicopter and climbing onto power lines for repairs and maintenance, dressed in a Faraday-cage suit.

"There's only three things I've ever been afraid of: electricity, heights, and women. And I'm married, too."

Awesome.

Something else entirely: Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark's clock:

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s.

"When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon's officials know or not [...] We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work."

So, a quick question for you: consider what you do at work. Is it something you would sneak past security for a year to do? Or, if you're not the sneaky kind, is it something you would pay to do (as opposed to getting paid to do it)?

It not, why the hell not?