How to Know if You Really Like Your Job

I love this post from one of the smartest college students – if not the smartest – I know.  Ben Casnocha suggests that if you want to find out what someone really does for a living, ask him what he does "on a day-to-day basis."

According to Ben, typically when you ask someone, "What do you do?" you get a grand, idealized vision of what their job is supposed to be.  Hence, he follows this question with, "Interesting. So what does that entail on a day-to-day basis?"  This question reveals a more concrete and helpful description.

Breaking down time into micro-chunks, says Ben, is also useful for evaluating happiness. It's hard to contemplate the present-tense question, "Are you happy?" in the abstract. Past and future tense also fail. Looking back in time, we rationalize. Looking forward in time, we make terrible predictions about what will make us happy. So, one of the most famous and effective studies of happiness involved participants who carried around pagers and, several times a day in the heat of a moment, took note of how they were feeling. The researcher then evaluated the aggregate of these momentary entries.

Ben’s bottom line is that the best inquires about one's work and life are rooted in day-to-day activities and feelings, and this makes total sense to me.  I asked Ben’s questions of myself, and found that the majority of the time, I enjoy the daily activities my job involves (interviewing a source, writing a new chapter, delivering a talk, answering a reader’s e-mail).  And those I don’t enjoy (invoicing, pitching), I can at least tolerate.  These are the real endeavors that make up the life of an author, as opposed to glamorous but unrealistic activities like dining with editors, attending book signings, and running from one TV interview to another, and these are the things I would want to share in an informational interview with someone who is thinking of becoming one. 

Comments

[Ben Casnocha]

Thanks for the kind words and response, Alexandra!

[Alexandra Levit]

You're welcome, Ben, it was a terrific post.