I think a good deal of success has to with doing what you don’t feel like doing and not doing what you feel like doing. I’m thinking about this because I’m tired and I don’t particularly feel like writing a blog post. Why am I doing it? Because I committed to doing it! I committed to bringing value to our readers. It brings to mind CAT claims.
During a serious catastrophe, it’s time to work – really work. A CAT adjuster must make hay while the sun is shining. A deployment will only last for a finite amount of time, and if I’m going to be away from my family, my home, my friends, my church, etc. I’m going to make it count by making it a success. My personal definition of a successful deployment includes making a lot of money, and when you’re paid according to a fee schedule, the more claims you write the more money you make – it’s that simple.
The problem is, it gets hard. I get up before the crack of dawn to drive to my first inspection, trying to time it so it’s just getting light enough to take good pictures. I grab a bit of fast-food and coffee on the way. I scope losses all day until it’s time to head back to the hotel so I can write up the reports before I go to bed (doing residential claims, I try to schedule things so I don’t scope more losses than I can write before I go to sleep that same day!). I’ve been going 100mph all day, and I start winding down while I eat a bit of dinner. After dinner I rarely feel like getting up, going to the desk, pulling out my scope notes and start writing up claims, but I do. I feel like turning on HBO, but I don’t. I crank out claims till I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, and then I do it again the next day. I repeat this process until the claims dry up. It’s tiring, I eat Tums, and I get cold-sores from not enough sleep. But it pays off.
When you can crank out volumes of quality, well-written claim reports without hassles for your Storm Manager or for the claimant, it gets noticed. I was pretty happy on my first assignment when I started getting calls from my Storm Manager asking if I could take claims that other adjusters were not completing. He was actually yanking claims from non-performing Adjusters and reassigning them to me because he knew I could produce! I would devour those claims and he’d send more. When everyone was dismissed, I got kept on as “clean-up”!
Do hard things. Don’t do what you feel like doing when you want to just float “downstream” – all the good stuff is upstream. Life is built up of moments. We all have to spend our time; you can’t save it. The difference between people is how they choose to spend their time. The fruits of doing hard things is good things; abundant provisions, regular, lucrative work, time with the family, job security and more. It’s worth the cost.
We discuss this type of stuff and more at our “Adjusting 101” class held every month. I invite you to join us at AdjusterPro in spending time doing well the things that matter most!
