Branch out to find work you love
When you look for a job or change careers, what you’re really looking for is a way to improve things in your life. But it’s hard to figure out what will really make things better and what will only make things worse.
There are some things we all know: People who are in love are happier, and people who are chronically unemployed are less happy. But most of us aren’t dealing with such clear-cut extremes.
Most of us ask ourselves on a regular basis, “What’s the best kind of work situation for me?” Yes, we’re all unique, but in truth we aren’t as unique as we think we are. So there are some rules we can all live by when looking for work we’ll love.
Liking What You Have
Forget the deep analysis. Our brains are simply not optimized to figure out what we’ll like. Instead, they’re optimized to figure out how to like what we have.
This helps us on an evolutionary basis: We eat what’s available, we take care of whatever kids we get, and so on. It doesn’t help us in a job hunt, where we have to guess what we would like if we had it.
Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, spent his whole career studying this sort of problem and published his findings in “Stumbling on Happiness.” Gilbert concludes that we’re basically unable to know if we’ll like a job until we try it, so self-analysis and market analysis aren’t going to get you very far. Start trying stuff.
You don’t have to quit your job to try things. Try new stuff on the weekend, volunteer for a project part-time, or ask for a temporary appointment to another department, for example. Be creative in how you learn about yourself. A job change doesn’t have to be now or never — it can be a process.
That said, here are some guidelines you can use for deciding what you’re going to try:
• Don’t go to grad school for humanities.
You would have had a better chance surviving on the Titanic than getting a tenure-track professorship in the humanities. The competition for these jobs is fierce, and very few corporate jobs give preference to someone who has a master’s in, say, early American history.
• Don’t be a lawyer.
Suicide is among the leading causes of premature death among lawyers. You can tell yourself you’ll be different, but statistically speaking, you probably won’t be. And while most lawyers don’t kill themselves, this doesn’t bode well for law being your dream career.
• Look for control over your work.
You might think that a manageable workload makes for a good job. But stress doesn’t actually make for a bad job. In fact, some people do very well in high-stress situations. Some even do their best work that way.
What drives people to burn out is when they work very hard but can’t meet their goals. The people most likely to burn out from their jobs, then, are those who are supposed to help children in helpless situations (at hospitals, for example) but can’t stop the pain.
Entrepreneurs, however, are known for working 18-hour days, and frequently love their work because they’re accomplishing something that excites them.
So the most important thing about enjoying your work, according to Alan Krueger, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, is having control over it — when you do it, how you do it, and what you accomplish. “People really like to be able to control the thermostat themselves,” Krueger says.
• Work where you can find a friend.
If you have one good friend at work, it’s a really good bet that you’ll like your job, according to a Gallup study published in the book “Vital Friends” by Tim Rath.
Take a look at the place you’re thinking of working. Do the people there look happy? Workplaces that promote friendship are more productive, and more fulfilling.
There are a lot of ways to judge whether or not you’ll be likely to make a friend at a new job. But one factor we often forget is architecture. Office space that promotes collaboration and taking a moment to say hi is space that is good for making friends.
• Don’t work with jerks.
Conversations that are insulting have five times the impact on your day than positive conversations. Unfortunately, we have a great memory for the unpleasant. Daniel Gilbert’s research supports this, but Bob Sutton, a professor at Stanford University, specializes in the jerk at work.
Sutton warns that if you work with jerks, you become one. His book gives advice on how to make sure you don’t end up working with these toxic people, and his web site gives you a way to test yourself to see if you’re a jerk yourself. After all, if you’re the jerk, you’re going to have a pretty hard time finding an office without one.
Work Life vs. Life Life
As you search for your new career, collecting advice as you go, remember that the stakes aren’t as high as you might think. A job is not your life.
Your personal life is your life, and your job supports that. The people who are most overwhelmed with career choices are the ones who think a career makes a life. So don’t be afraid to try a lot of options, and don’t be afraid to relax a little.
In certain professions, there are built in ways to get this additional experience. Most lawyers, for example, have the chance to do pro bono work (i.e. represent indigent clients in an array of matters.) Pro bono work does not have to be for an individual. While domestic abuse, divorce, immigration, and housing are all areas where volunteer lawyers are needed, some lawyers will gain valuable experience representing non-profit organizations who cannot afford legal representation. This can expose a young lawyer to an array of legal problems from real estate, to corporate to employment issues. You can even have the chance to learn about trademark, copyright and licensing by represting starving artists.
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I thought this was a great comment that could use a little more explanation. So Stephen wrote more. Here it is. And, by the way, his blog is a good resource for lawyers trying to figure out how to make their work life work better.
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Often it is just a way for lawyers to spend a portion of their time doing more rewarding work. For younger lawyers, it is a way to get more hands on responsibility than they get working on larger cases (i.e. in larger cases, the partner is more in control and might even have most of the client contact).
I don’t think that many lawyers use pro bono work as a way to explore new areas of interest; but a lot more of them could.
The one thing that pro bono work may do is show younger lawyers what it is like to be in charge of a case (or a matter) and to have responsibility for managing the client relationship (i.e. what there work will be like as they get more senior.) So in a sense, this is a way to try out being a more experienced lawyer.
But there are definitely opportunities to also try out new things (e.g. a corporate associate can see what it is like to be an advocate in court, etc.)
I started a new job a few weeks ago, which is slightly different than what I’m used to, in the name of branching out.
I’m trying to give the position a fighting chance, but I’m just not sure it’s what I want.
I’m really hungry for more fulfillment than I’m getting here, but I wonder if that’s just my youthful idealism and if it isn’t just time to grow up and suck up the reality of less than perfect job.
I’ve never been all that good at the “love the one you’re with” mentality, but your post makes me wonder if that’s the way I need to approach my situation.
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Saying you want more fulfillment is a fair thing to say, but an amorphous thing to act on. So if you are deciding if you should leave your current job, look for something specific you are leaving to do. Do you want to help people more directly? Do you want to be an artists? Do you want to travel? These are all things you can get from leaving the current job and doing something else. But it’s very hard to change jobs with no clear purpose.
Fulfillment is a really vague term if you are looking to take action. Try thinking in more concrete terms. As in, “I think I’d like to try something more solitary,” or “I want something with a shorter commute so I can go to the gym after work.”
Good luck.
–Penelope
In the many years I’ve been engaged in life/career/relationship coaching, I hear Devon’s career-related sentiments quite often…..”branching out”…”not sure”…hungry for fulfillment”…”idealism”…etc.
When my clients (not you Devon, as I don’t know you) initially express similar reactions, what they are really saying is, “I don’t know my purpose in life.” So, (1) they visit career counselors who hardly ever speak to motivation, passion and purpose (skills, abilities, behavioral strengths, yes, but that’s usually it.), 2. they get involved in a job/career their parents or family said is the way to go (i.e., living someone else’s dreams, or vision)(3) they get caught up in the job-du-jour as it’s sexy, (4)they job hop, searching but almost never finding a job/career where they land in a place of real satisfaction and meaning.
Purpose is heart-driven…not a “figure-it-out logical” decision. The fact that so many are engaged in work/careers they dislike, hate, find to be without meaning, etc., speaks to this notion of a purpose-driven career…one that sparks the passion, drive, enthusiasm that brings true and real fulfillment, inner peace, proactive engagement and an almost “by-the-way, I get paid for doing it.”
When one experiences true and real “purpose work” and discovers their purpose (it’s always been there, it’s just been co-opted and short-circuited by family, teachers, media, clergy, friends, reality TV, etc.) one can most often end up living a life at work that is positive, engaging, heart-felt, meaningful, a life at work characterized by a passion, motivation and desire that comes from work which is “purposeful.”
Backing into work/career, going into work/career with one’s eyes wide shut as opposed to eyes wide open, pursuing someone’s else dream or vision, etc., almost always ends up in a stress-filled, unhappy, frustrating, life-less work experience. It’s not surprising “mid-life crises” come much earlier than mid-life…folks at 30 are frustrated, losing their enthusiasm, bored, lost…
So, to the Devons out there, you might want to focus on purpose, life purpose, first, which will then support you to explore work and careers that will serve you on a deeper level, satiating your hunger for fulfillment, and melting and eliminating that “resigned resignation” feeling that accompanies that “Now what do I do?” and “I have to love the one I’m with” and “Is there alll there is?” approach to life at work. It’s do-able.
These sentences from “Down and Out in Academia, or: Profs and Proles”, which you link to in your piece, caught my eye:
Ms. Showalter’s assessment was based on the MLA’s survey of the nearly 2,200 graduate students who got their degrees in English, foreign languages, comparative literature, linguistics and classics in the 1996-97 academic year. Only 33 percent of those in English found tenure-track jobs within a year of finishing.
Amazing! One in three found tenure-track jobs within a year?!? That’s supposed to be BAD? You should see the reality in science then. I could give you any number of links, but it’s established fact that Ph.D. overproduction in the “queen of sciences”, physics, is at least 4 to 1. Better amend your advice from “don’t go to grad school for humanities” to “don’t go to grad school” period. (Maybe you can find some branch of engineering that’s an exception.)
Just a random link which I happen to have handy: professor of physics Jonathan Katz telling young people “Don’t become a scientist!”:
http://www.physics.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html
Thanks to both Penelope and Peter. You both make a lot of sense. I agree completely agree with the idea of finding a sense of purpose.
I definitely had that purpose in my previous position, but the field, by nature, lacked any stability. Now, I’ve got plenty of stability and a lack of purpose (or a desire to retreat to my previous purpose.)
The problem is in reconciling the two, but it has only been a few weeks, and I’m sure, given time and creative freedom, I’ll find a way to be passionate about this new chapter of my life as well.
It’s funny, my husband and I were discussing this very same topic just last night at dinner.
My husband is an old-school type who feels people should be grateful to have work, that “fulfillment” is a something extra one dare not expect, or even hope for. “Just be glad you have a job, Missy!” Apparently he’s not the only one, judging from Peter’s very interesting post.
Since I feel that finding one’s true purpose in life is a worthwhile endeavor I had to think about this. And I decided that, yes, if we are in a position to seek fulfillment, then we are very very lucky. Most people throughout history didn’t have this luxury. Same for many people in the world today.
So it’s a good idea to keep this in mind and be grateful.
But let’s go a step further: if we do have this fantastic luxury (lucky us) are we not in a way obliged to take advantage of it? Here we are in the very enviable position of being able to figure out what work not only fulfills our purpose on this planet, but makes us happy. I think this sort of means we must do so. If we have the option, we should take it.
Interesting post, Penelope.
What I found really interesting about Gilbert’s work is the two-part conclusion that 1) we can synthesize our own happiness, and 2) we can only synthesize it once we commit to a choice.
Leaving options open, as so many people strive to do in their careers, actually will inhibit our ability to make ourselves happy.
Thanks for this point, Erik. Often when folks come to me for coaching, they have this notion that “everything is possible” which, for many, usually that they have been giving one’s self permission to procrastinate, to be stuck, but are caught up in the magical thinking that all is do-able.
Intentionality, choice and commitment are crucial to forwarding the action of one’ life.
Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.
Raymon W.
I’m not quite understanding what all
this is supposed to be about?
Must be me or something…
How green is the grass on the other side of the fence?
Not much. Don’t believe it I tell you.
Jerry
Hey,
Really nice site you got here.
I’ll come back more often and check it out.
Peace!
I’ve been pretty stressed lately. This site helps to ease the anxiety! ;-)
Thanks a lot and take care of yourself.
Mrs. McNamara