Job Satisfaction

In his book, The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely talks about how when people talk to strangers on a plane or at a party, they “often discuss what they do for a living before talking about their hobbies, family, or political ideology”. Therefore, Ariely notes that:

“It seems that many people find pride and meaning in their jobs.”

Philosopher Roman Krznaric has this to say about the desire for job satisfaction:

“The desire for fulfilling work – a job that provides a deep sense of purpose, and reflects our values, passions and personality – is a modern invention. … For centuries, most inhabitants of the Western world were too busy struggling to meet their subsistence needs to worry about whether they had an exciting career that used their talents and nurtured their wellbeing…We have entered a new age of fulfillment, in which the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning.”

Trade up from money to meaning: best description of job satisfaction ever!

And then there’s Alex Balk’s take on people who talk with so much enthusiasm about whatever it is they work on:

“This is all the detritus you heap value on to camouflage emptiness, and your family doesn't have any idea what any of it means because they have chosen to keep themselves unaware of their inevitable demise through more popular and accepted forms of death-denial such as sports or reality television or partisan politics.”

and

“It is all garbage that we are focusing on to help distract ourselves from the horrors of existence or to fool ourselves into feeling that the things we are doing as occupations have some sort of impact or worth on lives beyond our own.”

I guess Balk is right about most people, except perhaps Steve Jobs who set out to make a “dent in the universe” and boy, did he succeed!