After about a year of being unemployed, I found a job (hooray), but it’s not a job I want to do for a long time.
In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport argues that the path to enjoying a job goes primarily through being good at that job, not liking the job when first starting it. I suspect there is much to be gained by devoting yourself to your current job and getting good at it. Even if you transition to another job, the self-control and emotional maturity you learn by doing this is likely to transfer.
(He also argues that it’s better to be in a field where quality is detectable and valuable; if you’re doing commodity work, than being especially good is unlikely to get you far. But I think there’s a psychological component as well: it is highly likely your coworkers and employers can detect a shift from disliking the job to liking the job, and you might be surprised at how much that transition will get you in terms of respect and power on the job.)
Sounds like reasonable advice, but my reasons for not wanting the stick with the job have less to do with my enjoyment of it and more with it it not being something I’m talented at/uses the skills I’m good at, it isn’t a direction I want to go with nor is it very high-paying. I like the job just fine and want to do it properly (to an extent), I’d just enjoy doing something else more.
In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport argues that the path to enjoying a job goes primarily through being good at that job, not liking the job when first starting it. I suspect there is much to be gained by devoting yourself to your current job and getting good at it. Even if you transition to another job, the self-control and emotional maturity you learn by doing this is likely to transfer.
(He also argues that it’s better to be in a field where quality is detectable and valuable; if you’re doing commodity work, than being especially good is unlikely to get you far. But I think there’s a psychological component as well: it is highly likely your coworkers and employers can detect a shift from disliking the job to liking the job, and you might be surprised at how much that transition will get you in terms of respect and power on the job.)
Sounds like reasonable advice, but my reasons for not wanting the stick with the job have less to do with my enjoyment of it and more with it it not being something I’m talented at/uses the skills I’m good at, it isn’t a direction I want to go with nor is it very high-paying. I like the job just fine and want to do it properly (to an extent), I’d just enjoy doing something else more.