Work as a source of happiness
I finished reading the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt this week. A lot of it was pretty common sense and some things were surprising, like religious people being happier.
One of the things that caught me off guard was work and achievement of work as a source of happiness. In hind sight this looks obvious, but for some reason I hadn’t thought of it. The book goes over the notion that people can look at work as a job, a career or a calling. Me and the wife had an interesting discussion around this subject. I’ve, personally, gone from work being seen as a job (coding websites – aside: this wasn’t my calling, but I can definitely see how some developers would see this as a calling) to a career (managing coders of websites) and now I’m trying to find my calling in the internet industry. She’s always looked at teaching as a calling.
Of course people who find work as a calling are happier then people who look at their work as a job. But beyond that actually getting down and working and having accomplished stuff – whatever that stuff might be or however task oriented it is – can also be a source of happiness.
So, do you see what you do as a job, career or a calling? And are you happier when you get stuff done, regardless of how miniscule or detailed the tasks might be?
