#153 - What we need from a job
The paradox in what we want and what we say we want from work
In what we want most from a job there’s a paradox: we don’t know what we want more—great work or a great work culture?
My sense is that you’ll be more energized by a job where you produced great work without a great boss or a supporting culture or a comfortable work environment than by a job where you felt supported and accepted at work but the work itself didn’t make you jump out of bed.
There's a line in Christopher Nolan's biography by film critic Tom Shone that goes:
If you were unhappy at the school, the mixture of misery and abandonment was potent.
The direction of causality in the line jumped out at me. Shouldn't the misery and the loneliness of life at boarding school make you unhappy?
Christopher Nolan spent several years in boarding school at Haileybury in England: militaristic, restrictive, isolating. It was an environment many boarders found hard to cope with. One of Nolan’s friends devoted his Sunday letter-writing sessions to beg his parents to come for him.
“Dear Mum and Dad, I fucking hate it here, get me out of here.” His letters would be intercepted and returned to him with: “I don’t think Mum and Dad want to read that, do they?”
Nolan survived all this. He was good at rugby and the sport was celebrated on campus. He would lie in bed after lights-out, listening to soundtracks of his favorite movies on his Walkman. For these nightly escapades, he would—this was the 80s—warm batteries on radiators to squeeze out the last drop of life from them. He played the cards dealt to him.
Nolan found purpose in a terrible place.
It’s much the same for us at our jobs. If we're unhappy with the work, if we are far removed from seeing the difference we make with our efforts, if we are not called by adventure, work is ennui. It is a dead end, no matter how many birthday vouchers come your way.
But if the work is thrilling, purposeful, we're willing to jump hoops, put up with discomfort, and do all that it takes.
👋Hi, I’m Satyajit. Wecome to my newsletter. Here I study human behavior with the goal of unpacking the patterns of thought underneath it for a better career and a better life.