The Secret to Happiness at Work – By Arthur C. Brooks (The Atlantic) / Sept 3 2021
Your job doesn’t have to represent the most prestigious use of your potential. It just needs to be rewarding.
Every year, Gallup asks a sample of American adults what might seem to be a rather loaded question: How much do you like your job? The results may surprise you. The portion who say they are “completely satisfied” at work has risen dramatically over the past two decades, from 41 percent in 2001 to 55 percent in 2019. In 2020, despite the fact that millions of Americans had shifted to remote work, 89 percent said they were either “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied.
I teach graduate students who have carefully envisioned their ideal career, many of whom are training to enter jobs in business or government. They find this statistic surprising because, like so many of us, they generally assume that to be satisfied, you must hold your dream job—one where your skills meet your passions, you make good money, and you are excited to get to work each day. No way 89 percent of people have this, right?
But this belief is based on a misunderstanding of what brings job satisfaction. To be happy at work, you don’t have to hold a fascinating job that represents the pinnacle of your educational achievement or the most prestigious use of your “potential,” and you don’t have to make a lot of money. What matters is not so much the “what” of a job, but more the “who” and the “why”: Job satisfaction comes from people, values, and a sense of accomplishment.
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