How to Find Fulfilling Work
By Roman Krznaric
"The thought once occurred to me that if one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment, one at which the most fearsome murderer would tremble, shrinking from it in advance, call one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning."
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
P5 I could see its future so clearly laid out before me and it filled me with dread.
>> I had this moment and I clearly remember it. I was sitting in a meeting one day, looked around the room, and thought to myself, 'I would hate myself if that was me in 5 years.'
P10 …it is possible to find work that is life-enhancing, that broadens our horizons and makes us feel more human.
P12 …looking for a job that is big enough for their spirit, something more than a ‘day job’ whose main function is to pay the bills….bringing your career and who you are into closer alignment.
P13 meaning, flow, and freedom
1) understand the sources of our confusions and fears about leaving our old jobs behind us and embarking on a new career.
2) reject the myth that there is a single, perfect job out there waiting for us to discover it, and instead identify our ‘multiple selves’ – a range of potential careers that might suit the different sides of our character.
3) rather than meticulously planning then taking action, we should act first and reflect later, doing experimental projects that test-run our various selves in the real world.
P19
1) we are not psychologically equipped to deal with the expansion of choice in recent history
2) we are burdened by our own pasts, especially the legacy of our early educational choices
3) popular science of personality testing rarely helps us pinpoint fulfilling careers
P24 …one effect of having so many options is that it produces paralysis rather than liberation…even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would be if we had fewer options…we can always imagine having made a better choice, so we will regret the decision we did make, and thus feel unhappy about it.
P26
1) try to limit our options
2) satisfice more and maximize less – instead of aiming to buy the perfect pair of jeans, we should buy a pair that is ‘good enough’. By lowering our expectations, we can avoid much of the angst and time-wasting that arises from having excessive choice.
P27
The way that education can lock us into careers, or at least substantially direct the route we travel, would not be so problematic if we were excellent judges of our future interests and characters. But we are not…people so often find themselves stuck in careers that do not suit their personalities, ideals or expectations.
P29 Similarly, you will be reluctant to give up a legal career to which you've dedicated a decade of your life, even if you find it unfulfilling. The sunk costs are just too high to ignore.
>> My graduate education guided me into a career path that suited me well; everyone thought so and I also believed it was perfect for me because I was so good at what I was doing. Yet, I was not happy. I felt like I was becoming this dull, boring person and I did not like it. I saw myself lose the vibrant spark I used to have and I wanted it back. It was not an easy decision to pull myself out of it because I invested 3 years of my life (and money), but I wanted out before I was too deep in it.
P30 Two forms of regret
1) the regret of abandoning a career into which we've put years of time, energy and emotion
2) the possibility of looking back on our lives in old age and regretting that we didn't leave a job that was not offering us fulfilment.
As time goes on, the choice we didn't make looms larger and larger in our minds, and the thought ‘if only I had…’ casts a dark shadow over our lives.
>> Did/do I have the regret of abandoning a career in museum? Yes, especially when I see my friends and classmates working in places like MoMA or Met. I feel like that could've been me or I could've done that. But would I have been happy? No, I don't think so.
P38 Do we want to follow the glittering allure of money and status, or to be guided in our search for meaning by our values, talents, and passions?
P45 what really seems to matter to people is the quality of their relationships in the workplace: both ‘respect’ and ‘the people you work with’ head up the list.
P46 …most of us desire to be a member of an ‘inner ring’ of esteemed or important people, but we ‘will reach no “inside” that is worth reaching’ since there are always more rings within it. The lesson may the simple one that we should not be so concerned about what other people think about us.
P48 The lesson is that in our quest for fulfilling work, we should seek a job that offers not just good status prospects, but good respect prospects. That may mean avoiding large bureaucratic organizations where individual efforts are barely acknowledged, and finding a workplace where employees feel treated as unique human beings and part of a community of equals.
P51 Our time here is short and we must be willing to take risks and make fools of ourselves, but never give up hope of a better world.
P67 Personal Job Advertisement
1) tell the world who you are and what you care about in life
2) put down your talents
3) your passions
4) the core values and causes you believe in
5) personal qualities
>> 1) I care about people
>> 2) Fluent in Korean and English, organized, fast learner, adapts quickly, creative, gets along with kids very well
>> 3) reading, writing, travelling
>> 4) children's rights and education
>> 5) patient, easy-going, personable, positive
P72 act now and reflect later.
P74 …we hate losing twice as much as we love winning, whether at the gambling table or when considering career change.
P78 We learn who we are by testing reality, not by looking inside...Reflection best comes later, when we have some momentum and when there is something new to reflect on.
P81 One of the greatest obstacles to change is that we get trapped by the strictures of our social circle and peers…our world view is a psychological straitjacket that restricts us from pursuing new possibilities.
P83 Most people find new jobs through personal contacts rather than official channels, and that shifting career requires developing new social networks.
P85
Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
–Goethe
P87 Flow
We are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. The action is valuable in itself, not a means to an end. In a typical flow experience, we feel totally engages in the present, and future and past tend to fade away.
P88 It most commonly occurs when we are using our skills to do a task that is challenging, but not so hard that we fear failing…Flow is also enhanced when we are being creative and learning new skills, when we can see the immediate impact of our actions, and when we have clearly defined goals.
P95
I don’t want to join the rat race.
Not be enslaved by machines, bureaucracies, boredom, ugliness.
I don’t want to be a moron, robot, commuter.
I don’t want to become a fragment of a person.
I want to do my own thing.
I want to live (relatively) simply.
I want to deal with people, not masks.
People matter. Nature matters. Beauty matters. Wholeness matters.
I want to be able to care.
–E.F. Schumacher
P118 Instead of asking ‘Can women have it all?, the real question should be ‘How can parents support each other so they can both have some of it all?’
P124 In the affluent nations of the modern world, there is no need for most of us to be captive slaves, to ‘be enslaved by machines, bureaucracies, boredom, ugliness’, as Schumacher put it. We have the ability, the obligation, to escape the stone by carving out new possibilities in our lives.
P127 ‘Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies,’ wrote Albert Camus.
P130 ‘He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.’ –Nietzsche.
‘What man actually needs is not some tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.’ –Victor Frankl
P131 Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? –Marie Curie
P132 Vocations are grown, and grown into, rather than found…goal quietly crept up on her during years of sustained scientific research…vocation crystallizes slowly, almost without us realizing it.
P136 …in the Odes of the Roman poet Horace: carpe diem, he advised, seize the day – before time runs out on you. In the Rabbinical tradition there is a saying attributed to the sage Hillel the Elder: ‘And if not now, when?
P136 don’t forget the power of written word: try writing your own obituary. Imagine yourself in the future, looking back over your life, and write the story of what you did, or hoped you had done.
P137 …life is there to be lived with passion, that risks are there to be taken, the day is there to be seized. To do otherwise is a disservice to life itself. –Zorba the Greek
