If you work full-time, a significant chunk of your week is bound up with your work life. Not only are you engaged eight or more hours a day, but you’re likely to think about things going on at work even when you’re doing other things. So, while your job doesn’t need to be your primary source of life satisfaction, you will be happier overall if your job is one that you find fulfilling.
Up front, it is worth pointing out that your ultimate aim should probably be satisfaction at work rather than happiness. Happiness is a momentary state that reflects how you’re doing at that moment. Satisfaction is a mixture of joy and pride that reflects the accumulated benefit of your work over a longer period of time.
Happiness and satisfaction are not unrelated. Chances are that if you’re miserable most of the time at work, you also won’t find it that satisfying. But you can have periods of stress or frustration at work and still find it satisfying overall. Think of a marathon runner: The athlete may find significant portions of a race physically uncomfortable, but still have a lot of pride and satisfaction at having completed the effort.
So, here are a few things to think about if you’re contemplating a new job:
1. Accentuate the positive
Two important factors influence your sense of satisfaction with work. One is that you’re more likely to find work satisfying when you have some agency. That is, you should have some ability to control at least some aspects of the way you work. Being able to select the projects you are doing, the way you allocate your time, or your work hours are all examples of this type of agency. The more you can control some of these factors, the more likely you are to feel good about your work.
The second is the fit between the tasks you do and your core personality characteristics. If you have a job that is detail oriented, you’re more likely to find that work engaging and enjoyable if you are high in conscientiousness (and naturally gravitate to the details of the work) than if you’re low in conscientiousness (and find the responsibility for details to be a pain). Similarly, if your job requires networking with lots of new people, you’re likely to enjoy it more if you are an extrovert than if you are an introvert.
Interestingly, improvements in these factors over time also make your job feel more satisfying—particularly early in your career. That is, you are likely to start your first job without much agency, but if you feel that you get more control over your work over time, you will find it satisfying. Similarly, having your work become more compatible with your personality also feels satisfying.
2. Eliminate the negative
There are a few factors that can really make your days miserable. The fewer of these you experience, the better it will be for your overall satisfaction.
One factor that people don’t weigh strongly enough when searching for a job is commute time. It is nice to have some transition time from work life to home life. That is one reason why people who work from home often need to create a version of a commute for themselves. (For example, I work from home, and I exercise at the end of the day in lieu of a commute to get ready to leave work behind.) A long commute is miserable, though, and it will ultimately make you feel bad about your job.
It is also hard to have a bad boss. Your supervisor provides you with important feedback about how things are going. If your boss makes you feel bad about what you’re doing, it will diminish the joy and satisfaction you experience. During your interview, try to get a sense of what people feel about their supervisors. Listen for clues about the kind of feedback employees get about their work. If your Spidey sense tingles when talking to people about their bosses, you may want to think twice before taking the job.
3. Align mission and values
A significant contributor to satisfaction is whether your work is a good fit to your values. Quite a bit of research has explored the kinds of values people adopt. These studies suggest that there are two big dimensions underlying people’s values. One is whether people are mostly focused on themselves or on others. The other is whether people tend to seek novelty or stability. People who value achievement, for example, are focused on new experiences for the self. By contrast, those who value tradition are focused on stability and the group.
Understanding what you value can help you determine whether a new job is likely to be a good fit for you. A fast-paced adventurous job with lots of opportunity for recognition and advancement is more likely to be satisfying if your values are more self- and change-focused. A career in which you work behind the scenes or pursue social good may be better if you value the collective rather than your own gain. A job that provides steady work is great for people who value stability.
This fit between values and mission can also help you diagnose any dissatisfaction with a job. Your values may change over the course of your life. Big life events like getting married, having a child, or surviving an illness may lead you to reevaluate what you care about. When your values shift and your job does not, a career path that was once a good fit may become less satisfying. If you find yourself unhappy with the progress of your career, it is worth thinking about whether your core values are different from what they were when you started that line of work.