I've reasoned that the work I want to do needs to be some combination of a) fascinating and b) meaningful. Some things that follow from that:
- each of those qualities exists on a continuum, so the goal is to make moves that take me up and/or to the right
- you can slide down / to the left (woops) by staying in the same job
- what moves one person up & to the right will be different from the next person (for me, it has to involve building something original, i.e. open-ended problem solving)
- money... hmmm.... either functions as a constraint (i.e. box that needs to be checked) or there's some sort of ROI optimization of money vs time spent (e.g. $1M to work a terrible job 5 hours per week... okay, I'm listening)... buyer beware...
Interesting thought experiment. Thanks for getting the ol' hamster wheel turning!
I love this comment because, to your point, maybe we focus too much on a dream job rather than a dream set of criteria. Adjectives, rather than nouns, might be the optimal way of dissecting this.
I've reasoned that the work I want to do needs to be some combination of a) fascinating and b) meaningful. Some things that follow from that:
- each of those qualities exists on a continuum, so the goal is to make moves that take me up and/or to the right
- you can slide down / to the left (woops) by staying in the same job
- what moves one person up & to the right will be different from the next person (for me, it has to involve building something original, i.e. open-ended problem solving)
- money... hmmm.... either functions as a constraint (i.e. box that needs to be checked) or there's some sort of ROI optimization of money vs time spent (e.g. $1M to work a terrible job 5 hours per week... okay, I'm listening)... buyer beware...
Interesting thought experiment. Thanks for getting the ol' hamster wheel turning!
I love this comment because, to your point, maybe we focus too much on a dream job rather than a dream set of criteria. Adjectives, rather than nouns, might be the optimal way of dissecting this.