Wednesday, May 16, 2012

What Do You Need From Your Job?

I am currently reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, which explains Gladwell's theory of how people become extremely successful (think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, John D. Rockefeller, etc.). The crux of Gladwell's theory is people must be innately talented to be highly successful, but they must also have the good fortune of a certain set of circumstances that will enable them to capitalize on their skills.  The book is a fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.

However, this post is about something that I read last night.  Gladwell says in the book:

"Those three things--autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward--are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.  It is not how much money that we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five.  It's whether our work fulfills us."

I continued to think about this in the context of my side job editing papers.  Overall, I enjoy that job very much.  However, I sometimes find myself exasperated when I am working long hours on a challenging, poorly-written edit just to make the same amount of money as I would on a quick, engaging, well-written edit.  The reward does not always match the effort.

On the other hand, my editing job is sufficiently complex and gives me complete autonomy to decide when and where I want to work.  Those two factors prevent me from becoming completely exasperated by the lack of sufficient reward that I sometimes experience.

For now, I need to continue this job to make extra money.  Perhaps I can find a way to reward myself for the tough work to help me get through it when I'm frustrated.

Using these three criteria, how does your job measure up?  Are you satisfied with your work?  Is there something else that you need from a job to be happy?  Can you think of ways to give yourself more autonomy or complexity if your job doesn't provide these qualities?  If you are a boss, how can you provide your employees with jobs that have these three characteristics?  




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