People don’t buy houses or cars if they’re not sure about every detail. It’s too important to rush into that kind of commitment.
But how many of us toil in jobs that we don’t think are right for us?
You will spend more time between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-five working than you will spend doing anything other than sleeping. Your job not only will define possibilities for your future, it may also come to define you.
Never stop thinking about what you need to do to love what you do.
William Raspberry is a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Washington Post. He loves his job and wishes more people loved theirs.
“You need to love what you do. Love the hell out of it. Don’t settle for just liking your career, for becoming a data processor or school principal or Toyota saleswoman because ‘the paycheck’s decent and, hey, it’s a job.’”
William has a simple test for figuring out if you’re in the right line of work: “Imagine the job you have right now paid you the least amount of money you could possibly live on. Would you still want the job? If not, you’re not in the right line of work.”
Even though they may not want to, people tend to take their jobs home with them at the end of the day. Low levels of career interest are associated with low enjoyment of life overall and even greater dissatisfaction with family life.
O’Brien, Martinez-Pons, and Kopala 1999