adipure.com

What do you really want from your work? What does it mean to you? What would be ideal? What are the few things you care most about?
Below are many different things that might be important about your job.
• High pay
• A job I enjoy
• Security
• Good, comfortable conditions
• Excitement
• Friends at work, interesting colleagues
• Makes me think
• Variety
• A decent boss
• Hours that fit in with my life and are not too long
• Freedom to do things my own way
• Employer’s reputation
• Prestige of my own job
• Excellent fringe benefits
• Prospects for promotion
• Important work that benefits other people
• Good training and ability to add to my skills
• An inspiring boss or leader in the organization
• Flexible hours, work when I like
• Place where I might meet my life’s love
• Work that exactly fits my own abilities
Now, remembering the need to focus and that less is more, pick the one, two, or three points — ideally just one point — that matter(s) most to your happiness. Your choice points toward your 80/20 destination for work. If you can be even more specific — “I want to be a movie director,” “I want to be a nurse,” “I want to be a management consultant” — so much the better.
What is really strange is that many talented people pursue jobs and careers that do not make them and their families happy — or as happy as a different job and career could.
Of my good friends, I figure at least half have not chosen the career path that would make them happiest. They put success and money ahead of enjoyment, fulfillment, and purpose.
Most of them have made good money. Did the extra happiness from money and status outweigh the extra happiness they would have derived from more fulfilling work? I doubt it.
Here’s an intriguing fact. Dividing my friends into those who chose the jobs they loved on the one hand, and those who worked for money and success on the other, it is the former group who have made, on average, more money. Those who worked for fun and fulfillment rather than money also tended to make more money