When I had been at the FT for about a year, a young woman who had just joined the paper invited me out for a drink. I had barely taken a first sip of acidic white wine when she declared herself terminally bored with writing mundane corporate news stories and asked if I was too. No, I replied. I found it very interesting.
“I really envy you,” she said, fixing her big, round eyes on me. I settled back into my seat, preparing to be told what a brilliant financial journalist I was. Instead she said: “You seem so happy just bumbling along. I wish I could be like that, but I can’t – I’ve always been a compulsive overachiever.”
As an insecure, rabidly ambitious 25-year-old, I wasn’t terribly pleased to be put in the bumbler class. Neither was I fooled by the faux-envy. Yet I now discover that she was on to a general truth that almost never gets acknowledged: bumblers make happier workers and may be worthy objects of envy.