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The Shoe Pile Theory of Work (And Why We All Need Tangible Wins)

Writer's picture: Buffy DaveyBuffy Davey


Some days I dream of working in a shoe repair shop.


Not because I have any particular passion for shoes, but because at a shoe repair shop, you can see exactly what you've accomplished each day.


I recently found myself obsessing over a tiny website update. An old client contacted me to make some small changes to a website I'd built them, and I was overjoyed. Not just happy – absolutely engrossed. I had to deliberately put it at the bottom of my to-do list, below a stack of less exciting tasks, trying to bribe myself into tackling the important stuff first.


Even then, the moment I sat at my desk, the rationalization started: "I could just knock this out quickly. That's one thing completed – that's productive, right?"


But I was lying to myself. I just really, really wanted to go touch up that website, far more than I wanted to focus on the deep, meaningful, genuinely fulfilling work scheduled for the day.


Why?


Because I could put it in my "shoe pile."


The Shoe Pile Theory of Work


I had this amazing teacher in high school – Mr. Engbrecht. He was one of those people who had taken a wild and rambling path through life, reinventing himself many times before landing in front of 11th grade Lit students. He'd planted trees, poured concrete, and taken care of toddlers. He coached our improv team and ran a film club showing old screeners "borrowed" from a film critic friend, complete with "NOT FOR RESALE" flashing across the screen.


Mr. Engbrecht used to let us crash in his classroom during free periods, shooting the shit about a lot of things. And it was there he filled me in on the shoe pile theory of work.


Because one of Engie's jobs had been at a shoe repair shop. "Every day, I'd come in and there would be a big pile of shoes on one side that needed to be fixed," he told us. "And I'd sit and I'd work and at the end of my shift, there'd be a pile of shoes on the other side of me that I'd fixed. I could see how much work I'd done, I could touch it."


"Teaching's not like that..." he mused.


When Work Disappears

Kevin Spacey makes a "poof, it's gone" motion with his hands from the movie Usual Suspects

A lot of jobs aren't like that. I can go through weeks of good, focused work without ever having a single concrete thing I could put in my "fixed shoes" pile. And sometimes that's really hard, to know your work is ephemeral, that it can't be easily quantified or pointed to.


So I know why I wanted so badly to make those website updates. Not just because I love websites (I do) but because it was such a shoe pile task. After an hour, I could look at that website and say, "See those changes right there? I did that today."


Piling Up Your Shoes


A different client recently asked me to help create her version of an "annual report." She works in coaching and facilitation – another education-adjacent field where success isn't easily measured. She wanted something that showcased all she'd accomplished and all the people her work had touched.


Together, we're working on a "Spotify Wrapped-style" year in review, gathering fun metrics about her professional development hours, workshop attendees, keynote speeches, and coaching sessions. We're highlighted new clients and celebrating long-term partnerships.


It's becaming an invigorating way to look back on a year of intangibles – to create something concrete in an industry where success is hard to quantify.


Marking Your Progress

A man emerges from underneath a pile of shoes in a store

So make yourself a shoe pile. Fix the website. Count your attendees. Document your development.


All good work moves you forward. Sometimes we just need help seeing how far we've come.

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