After a heart attack, a corporate manager was sent to relax on a farm. But boredom struck fast, so he asked the farmer for work. Amused, the farmer gave him the worst task—cleaning cow manure—expecting it to take a week. The manager finished it in a day. Surprised, the farmer challenged him again: behead 500 chickens. That too, done in a day.

On day three, the farmer offered a simple job: sort potatoes into small and large piles. Hours later, nothing was done. The farmer asked, “How could you do the hard stuff but not this?”

The manager sighed, “All my life, I’ve been cutting heads and dealing with crap—but now you want me to make decisions!” A joke, but revealing. The stress of corporate life wasn’t in the dirty work—it was in the endless decisions.

In another tale, a new office manager inherited three envelopes from his predecessor, to be opened only during crises. The first said, “Blame your predecessor.” The second: “Reorganize.” The third? “Prepare three envelopes.” And so, the cycle of leadership and survival continued.

Sometimes, the hardest part of any job isn’t the work—it’s the choices that come with it.