If you engage in work that you enjoy, you’ll function more effectively in all areas of your life. And people who do work that they love tend to excel at it too, and almost always find that their earning power increases as a result of this passion. Here’s how to succeed:
1. Understand your values – those ideals and principles that determine the meaning of your life. Why: Your values are the emotional foundation for your actions. Establishing a solid foundation should be the first step in your career search; or in achieving satisfaction in your present job. Key question: What is really important to you? And: What is so enjoyable that you would feel guilty getting paid for it? Also: If you could do anything you wanted, what would you choose to do? Answering these questions enables you to identify your values. Caution: Many people feel that money is the most important aspect of a job, a form of currency that’s needed for business transactions. Note: If your job would lose all meaning if money wasn’t involved, then that job isn’t supporting your ideals or principles. Best: Decide how your values relate to your place in the workforce.
2. Honour your values. Because: Contradicting your personal values leads to inner turmoil and unhappiness. Example: Your love for the outdoors may lead you to working on a construction crew. But: If you also appreciate nature, you’ll be working at a job that is destructive to it; and you’ll be violating your own values. Better: If you become a forest ranger. You’ll be working to protect the natural habitat and wildlife that you value – and will be honouring your personal values. Fact: When your work corresponds to your values, it automatically becomes something that you enjoy.
3. Learn to commit. Without commitment, job security will become your greatest insecurity. Vital: You have to be either ‘committed’ or ‘not committed’; ‘kind of committed’ just doesn’t cut it. The symptoms of being only ‘kind of committed’ – arriving late occasionally, taking the odd day off when you’re not really that ill, missing some deadlines – are spotted easily by employers. And: With an average of 200 applications per job, there is always someone ready to take your place. Wiser: Find your passion and build your career around it. Truth: If you’re passionate about your work, it becomes enjoyable; you’ll require less supervision and will be an asset to your employer. Benefit: For people who find their passion and pursue it, the opportunities are endless – employers love committed and enthusiastic people. Personal experience: I talked to a former top executive who now works as a silversmith in the summer and a cross-country ski instructor in the winter. He said, ‘If I’d known I could make good money playing, I’d have stopped working and started playing long ago.’ This man loves what he does. It’s obvious to others, and they clamour to deal with him. Bottom line: Commitment isn’t something to fear; ultimately it’s very rewarding.
4. Change and adapt to change. Guarantee: The only thing that is certain in the workplace is uncertainty – management styles, technology, the economy. Everything is changing, and will continue to do so. Sensible: Accommodate management changes, even if you don’t agree with them. How: Learn to respond positively to change by seeing other perspectives. Analogy: In football, the way you play when you don’t have the ball – moving into attacking or defending positions as appropriate – is as important as what you do with it when you’re in possession. Also: Being able to recognise more effective ways of doing things can lead to increased job security. Reason: For your business to stay competitive, it needs to ride the front of that wave of change. If it follows after the wave has crested and subsided, it will be washed ashore. Good: Seek new ways of doing things that require the least effort for the greatest results. And: Change your thinking from ‘my employer owes me’ to ‘I’ll be so effective in this job that they can’t afford to do without me’. Reality: Your employer is investing in you every time your wages are paid, and will continue to make that investment only if you reap a worthwhile pay-off or demonstrate (and soon fulfil) extraordinary potential. Unless you are an asset to the company, your job longevity is in serious jeopardy.
5. Invest in becoming a general specialist – someone who sees the big picture, is an expert in a number of its parts, and keeps abreast of where the industry is going. Important: There is a great deal of pressure in this high-technology age to know more and more, but only about a very narrow field. But becoming over-specialised leads to tunnel vision and is a sure ticket to a lay-off notice one day soon. Specialisation leaves you nowhere to go when – not if – the company or economy shifts. Crucial: Invest 5% of your time, energy and money in learning as much as possible about your present job situation and about other career opportunities that may arise in the future. Guideline: If you work a forty-hour week, invest just two hours in continued learning; reading trade journals, practising a present skill, learning a new one, and so on.
6. Opt for rich experiences. Tip: becoming involved in new experiences can benefit you later in your career and bring deeper meaning to your life. Example: if you’re looking for work, a higher paying job as an assembly-line worker in a cannery provides little in the way of diversified knowledge or experience that can be used again in other circumstances. But a lower-paid job as a sales assistant in a building supplies company offers experience in dealing with computers, pricing, stock control and handling customers, and offers a wealth of transferable skills later in your career. Useful: Travelling and volunteering are key ingredients in a successful career. Travel provides experiences you cannot duplicate by staying close to home, increases your understanding of other people and different ways of doing things, and changes your perspective on life. Volunteering can open career opportunities in other fields. Best: Travel and volunteering change how prospective employers look at you. You’re obviously a person who is really living rather than letting life happen to you.
7. Balance your life – in particular your career, lifestyle and money. Fact: Your career consumes about one third of your life, but your satisfaction with it dramatically affects all other aspects of your life. Vital: Take time to engage in leisure activities each day and every week; read a book, go for a stroll, play sport. Remember, if you’re on a tight budget you can engage in leisure activities that won’t cost the earth. Essential: remember this is leisure time. If you compete aggressively to win, you’re not balancing your life. Also: Build your lifestyle around your take-home pay. Problem: Some peple spend to their gross income while others live to their expectations, spending on the basis of what they expect to be making ‘soon’. Tactic: The secret of wealth accumulation is to take the first 10% of your take-home pay and invest it, and then develop and stick to a budget based on the remaining 90%. Alternative: Finance-related stress arising from money mismanagement is carried back into the workplace as resentment – the employee blames the employer for not paying enough, and this affects job satisfaction and performance.
If you engage in work that you enjoy, you’ll function more effectively in all areas of your life. And people who do work that they love tend to excel at it too, and almost always find that their earning power increases as a result of this passion. Here’s how to succeed:
