SINGAPORE: You’d think that a bleak economic future would make us appreciate our jobs, but according to Microsoft’s new Work Trend Index, nearly half of our workforce plans to quit their current company this year. Since the pandemic began last year, I’ve seen this growing trend of unhappiness gain traction among the hundreds of people I’ve trained and coached.
The concept of the “dream job” is one that continues coming up in my conversations with my coaching clients. This has the potential to be both strong and troublesome. On the one hand, many successful careers and businesses begin with a dedication to a mission. READ: Commentary: Being a’sell out’ was the best career decision I ever made. The “dream” becomes problematic, however, when people believe that the illusive dream job is responsible for turning their lives into an unrestricted feast of unicorns and rainbows.
While I believe it is beneficial for us to want meaningful employment, I believe the concept of a dream job has to be reconsidered.
There’s the phenomenon of expectation inflation, for starters. Happiness and satisfaction, according to behavioral economics research, may be reduced to a simple equation of expectations minus reality. Simply simply, pleasure occurs when your expectations are lower than your reality. If your expectations are higher than what life has to provide, however, you will be unhappy. Consider the pioneer generation, who grew up during a time of war and uncertainty. Their main goals were to survive, provide for their families, and live a secure existence.
(Image courtesy of Pexels/Ketut Subiyanto)
When you combine their low expectations with the surprising reality of their existence in a developing Singapore – inexpensive home prices, asset appreciation, and a rapidly expanding economy – you get a situation where their reality far exceeded their expectations. To put it another way, net happiness. Compare this to the experience of millennials, who make up the majority of today’s workforce. These are job seekers who grew up in houses with fewer children and more parental attention during prosperous times. The message to this generation is that they can achieve everything they set their minds to — the sky is the limit. READ: Commentary: The New Career Stability is Career Mobility READ: After a chaotic epidemic year, workers enjoy mental health days off.
When you add social media to the equation – the constant drip-feeding of sudden success stories and influencers doing what they love – you get a sea of disappointed expectations on an unprecedented scale.
For many, this means continuously being dissatisfied that their profession is no longer just a way to support themselves and their families. It now has to be much more: fulfilling, meaningful, enjoyable, safe, and liberating. THE IMPACT OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS This reminds me of a statement made by famous psychologist Esther Perel concerning marriages. For generations, marriage was viewed as solely a legal and financial transaction. We want our partner to be our confidante, lover, therapist, mentor, best friend, soulmate, and so on these days. In effect, we’re counting on a single person to give what a town or tribe used to provide. Employees also tell us that it is no longer enough for them to have a job that pays them well; they also want personal growth and intellectual stimulation. They want more from their bosses, such as mentorship and feedback, a work environment that fosters a sense of community, as well as recognition, agency, stability, and, of course, a consistent salary. Employees aren’t the only ones who have upped the bar; we’ve seen this expectation inflation at work as well. Employers might expect long hours leading up to quarterly results reporting, and they can micromanage every element of how work is completed during pandemics. READ: Let’s quit exaggerating the importance of a college diploma beyond your first job. Yes, the situation has shifted. Wanting a lot more out of a job isn’t a bad thing; it reflects how work and the value we place on it have changed through time. Work has become all-consuming in recent months, so it’s only natural that individuals have less time for leisure, self-care, and community. And this may explain why we desire our work to provide us with all of the stimulation and fulfillment that we would want in our free time. CREATING CAREER EXPERIMENTSAre these work and life demands sustainable or healthy? Rather than expecting our professions to fulfill us on all levels, I believe we should take responsibility for our mental and emotional well-being. The paradox of choice is a possible foe in your quest for your ideal employment. “One effect of having so many options is that it produces paralysis rather than liberation (and) even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would be if we had fewer options,” writes psychologist Barry Schartz, author of The Paradox of Choice. Instead, we can devote more effort to designing careful professional experiments, which can be divided into three groups. The first are high-risk experiments that include taking a long vacation from one’s regular career, such as the “radical sabbatical,” a term developed by Laura van Bouchot, who spent her 30th birthday trying 30 various occupations. Laura compared her experience to dating, noting that candidates that fulfilled her mental wishlist of attributes did little for her, while at other times she came across something that didn’t meet half of her list but blew her away. What’s her conclusion? “Finding the proper job isn’t about thinking and planning; it’s about going on a lot of job dates and trying things out until you find something that sparks your interest.”
Work has been all-consuming since the outbreak. (iStock/PeopleImages)
This strategy is unattainable for most of us, as it necessitates significant commitment and risk.
The second form of professional experiment is called “branching projects” or “temporary tasks,” and it is more practical and less daunting. These combine current employment with transitory experiences such as stretch assignments, part-time volunteer work, or beginning a side business. READ: Call me a strawberry millennial, but I’m not ready to be exploited just because I’m enthusiastic about something. You could, for example, teach pilates on weekends to see if you enjoy it. Perhaps you’d want to try your hand at event management and volunteer to assist at a huge event to see what the job includes behind the scenes. The third form of experiment is the least dangerous, and it entails networking with people from various businesses and expanding your social circle. Who we spend time with on a regular basis has a significant impact on our worldview. It will be far more difficult to imagine and transfer to a different world if you really want to break out of law but all of your friends are lawyers. Instead of imagining possibilities in your thoughts, join a new networking organization online and set up coffee dates with people who work in fields where you could be interested. READ: No ordinary disturbance – the coronavirus meets a rising generation IS YOUR DREAM REALLY YOUR DREAM? Many of my customers tell me that their professions are the product of their parents’ ambitions rather than their own. Family pressures and expectations, particularly for Asians, can have a significant impact on our early educational and employment decisions. In a UK research, 25% of British Asian graduates confessed that their parents had a substantial influence on their career choice, compared to only one out of every ten non-Asians. Your view of what defines a dream job evolves as you develop and mature as a person. Instead of continuously fantasizing about your ideal job, a healthy approach to work is to seek out growth opportunities that will allow you to develop life skills. I found bureaucracy annoying when I worked at a huge institution, but it encouraged me to look for areas of opportunity. As a result, I took on responsibilities that taught me how to navigate huge, complex networks and how to use career coaching. When I eventually shifted to starting my coaching business, these abilities came in handy. Similarly, rather than focusing just on finding the ideal boss, work on improving your interaction skills with the one you already have. This isn’t to imply you have to stay in a job you despise or put up with a boss who is a jerk, but there are good and terrible times in any relationship, and in an era of constant change, bosses don’t stay put for very long. If your company is large enough, you can also request to do something different. People who use the concept of a dream job to increase their self-awareness about their beliefs while keeping their expectations light are the ones I find most fulfilled by their profession. Finally, the capacity to enjoy and throw yourself into this lifelong process of exploration, evolution, course correction, and progress is the key to a rewarding profession. Above all, trust that if you put in the effort, all of the pieces will come together to create a tapestry of work that is bigger and more satisfying than the elusive dream job. Crystal Lim-Lange is the co-author of the national bestselling book Deep Human – Practical Superskills for a Successful Future, as well as the CEO of Forest Wolf, a leadership training and talent development firm./n
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