Follow Your Passions

Job satisfaction levels, however, tend to rise as hours worked per week increase, but begin to recede at 60 or more hours.
- The Conference Board, on US Job Satisfaction

I came across an article detailing findings by The Conference Board about U.S. Job Satisfaction declining. It provided a less than inspirational overview of the current situation in the workforce of the United States. But that piece of it above, about job satisfaction increasing as hours per week increased, has me curious to know more. Is it because people are making more money through working more hours? Are the people working more hours closer to retirement? Or, is it the reason that I find myself happier when I work more hours – I enjoy what I’m doing in my job?

More from the article – “Consumers rated bonus plans and promotion policies as the least satisfactory benefits of employment, with less than 23 percent claiming they are satisfied with their company’s policies. Satisfaction is also low for performance review processes, workload, work/life balance, communication channels and potential for future growth. Says Franco: ‘Perhaps, this is why two out of every ten employees does not see himself in his current job a year from now.’”

There are more obstacles than this between you and being happy in your work. If you let them become insurmountable, they absolutely will take you up on the offer. But all of these things are difficult if not impossible to control. There is, however, one particularly effective way at avoiding dissatisfaction in your work because of this mountain of reasons to be disgruntled.

Do what you are passionate about.

You can do this by finding a job you can be passionate about, or by taking the job you have today and unlocking how to be happy in it, but if you don’t figure out how to do one or the other, you run the risk of ending up a statistic.