Fulfilling work is a relatively recent development. Fulfillment wasn’t something people really sought before the 17th century. The earliest known use of the word was in 1624. And we only started associating fulfillment with work towards the latter part of the industrial revolution.
Work was something we did to keep a roof over our heads, our bodies clothed and our families fed. Work was backbreaking and we did it out of necessity, not for pleasure. That’s why work was called work. And, if you are older than 25, it’s unlikely that you have memories of your parents or your grandparents deriving a lot of joy from their work.
Fulfillment is a lot to expect from work. The reason the idea of having work that gives our lives meaning is such a recent development is due to there being so few vocations to choose from before the industrial revolution. If you were born some time in the 1600s it was fair to say that your work options were limited and depended on your social standing and where you were born. If you were amongst the most fortunate you had around 2000 trades to choose from. Today there are around 500,000. With all that choice it stands to reason that our expectations around finding the right job seems reasonable.
The challenges of choosing fulfilling work: the paradox of choice
When faced with 500,000 choices it’s inevitable that we will be faced with the paradox of choice. We view choice as a form of freedom. The more options we have the more we believe we’re getting access to the optimum solution for whatever problem we’re trying to solve. And we also seem to believe that with more options, the ideal solution will more clearly present itself. However, science tells us differently. Barry Schwartz claims that with more choice we have the more we’ll experience anxiety and feelings of loneliness. Faced with too many options people might themselves be unable to make a choice with which they’ll be content.
When I have to buy toothpaste at the supermarket I’m usually faced with four square meters of toothpaste options arranged on five shelves. I can easily spend five minutes debating the merits of Oral B’s freshening qualities with Colgate’s gum protection properties. All-in-all, there are about eight brands to contend with, each with multiple variants and combinations of benefits. And this is toothpaste. The most dire outcome from making the wrong decision is that I have a bad taste in my mouth twice a day.
The challenges of choosing fulfilling work: we choose too early in life
The fact that we have to choose a single career from 500,000 jobs and vaguely knowing that choosing poorly is likely to lead to deep dissatisfaction, potentially for a lifetime; it’s a miracle any of us have careers. However, the fact that many of us have work doesn’t mean we’ve chosen well. We likely ignored or remained ignorant about 499,000 jobs out there, and instead chose from a small sample jobs based on the little we knew about work combined with what we thought would be cool to do when we were somewhere between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five year of age.
And I don’t remember making a single wise decisions before the age of thirty four.
I could have a rant about how the system doesn’t educate us about what is important in life. About how we are forced to make life defining decisions when our self awareness and self knowledge is almost non-existent. But I won’t. Instead I will try to share a few strategies that I’m using now to understand how I can uncover more fulfillment in my own life.
3 things to find a more fulfilling life
Know yourself
We need to take the time to consider who we are and what we might want from life. Once we know what this might be, we have to decide what we need to incorporate into our day-to-day lives for these things to manifest in our lives. We need to know what we love doing and then decide what trade might incorporate these elements. However, it’s important that we are specific and that we focus on things we like to do. If one likes to tell stories, find out what aspect of telling stories gives you joy. Is it having a captivated audience hanging on your every word? Or is it the fact that you are entertaining people? Or might it be that through the moral in the story you are able to teach people something? Being specific is key.
We need specificity because without delving deeper into what evokes joy in us we might follow a path that doesn’t meet our needs. If you like telling stories, you might end up trying to become a novelist. Which seems logical, but if your joy comes from teaching people, you might find the act of writing hollow and frustrating.
If you find getting to know yourself difficult, I recommend going to see a psychotherapist, counsellor or a career coach. The truth is we are in many ways too close to ourselves to be able to see what might be obvious to others. Delving into your own psyche to get to know yourself better is never a waste of time, and when you work with someone who is good at counselling the benefits can be life changing.
Don’t think in terms of ‘jobs’
When we make career decisions we tend to think in terms of titles. “Would I enjoy being a lawyer, or an accountant?” Thinking in these terms does us a great disservice because we end up making decisions based on stereotypes and preconceived notions about various trades. It is rare that we will ever truly know what is involved in doing a job without actually doing it.
The second pitfall about starting the decision making process with job titles is that we can never know all the jobs that are out there. I can maybe name a few hundred jobs if I really put my mind to it. In approaching our decision making by getting specific early on in the process we risk missing out on a whole possible world of careers that might make us endlessly happy. For this reason, start from the inside out. Ask yourself, “what have I liked doing?” And then find the career that has an over representation of the things you’ve enjoyed doing in your life.
Take your time
I have written about this before. We need to take the time to reflect and think about the big decisions we have to make in our lives. If it takes me five minutes to choose between 30 odd toothpaste brands and variations, then I should have taken almost 10 months to make a decision about what career I want to pursue. Multiply that by the impact a career decision will have on my only, and to me, valuable life, then I should have spent at least 18 months considering what work might bring my life more meaning.
I cannot stress this enough. Contemplate and think about what you want. The exercise isn’t self indulgent, it is necessary. What we do for work has an incalculable impact on who we are and how we live. Taking the time to think early on in life about this question, can save us years of heartache and loneliness later in life.
And don’t wait for permission
Most of us do work we were given permission to do. We secretly believe that we don’t have the skills, talents or the personality to do important work. However, the biggest difference between people who are successful in life and those who aren’t, is that those who have found success believe they deserve it, and therefore took opportunities rather than sought permission.
Those of us who waited for permission were guided by our parents, teachers and friends. Every time your mum or teacher told you you’d be good at that job, or have you thought of this career, you were given permission to add those suggestions to your consideration list. And it is from this list that we inevitably chose our careers.
We deserve and can achieve far more than what we do today, but we are too afraid to stand up and take what’s right in front of us. With a bit more courage, self awareness and thought we might be able to have everything we ever wanted out of life.