Wednesday, May 30, 2007

A Quest of My Own

We are all aware that Bryant has begun his noble quest to find the supreme Greek burger place. However, you probably were not aware that I am currently embarking on a little quest of my own. Though somewhat less noble and certainly more selfish, it's still a pretty good quest: to find myself a job that will bring fulfillment and happiness... or at least that won't cause me to stick a fork in my eye.

What makes this quest such a challenge is that I have yet to decide what I actually want in a job. Tricky, huh? Well, in the process of scavenging the help-wanted websites, I found an article entitled "How to Find a Job You'll Love." Perfect! That's exactly what I need to know! While the article didn't make any life-altering decisions for me (bummer), it did talk about an interesting study conducted by famous economist Alan Krueger and psychologist/Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. Their study examined whether or not people with high-paying jobs are happier than their less wealthy peers. ...And here comes the point of my blog post today. {dun-dun-DAH!} I wanted to share the following insightful conclusions from their study:

The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities. Moreover, the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient.

Cool, huh?

So at the very least, after reading this article about how to find a good job, my quest for the Ultimate job has broadened to include low-paying work as well. It seems my job search is expanding, not narrowing, as I venture on. (But I actually wasn't picky about pay in the first place. Honest.)

Oh well. Onward and upward we go!

2 comments:

the narrator said...

look deep within yourself. there you will find it.

be said...

My ideal job would still be to work at a record store. I should spend more time memorizing useless information about bands and increasing my coolness (instead of wasting time developing skills).