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What is work like in the Western world, and how can you construct a fulfilling career life?

Let’s begin our discussion by spelling out three changes in the developed-world career landscape over the past half-century (I’ll be discussing that other sea change, women in the work force, at the end of the chapter):

The benefit of the on-line revolution is work flexibility. People can telecommute from an office that is halfway around the world; or, even if their office is around the corner, work on their own schedule at home. This melding of work and home time, however, is a double-edged sword. Yes, not having to go into the office allows you to take the kids to the dentist or pick them up from school, but you are potentially on the job 24 hours a day. In fact, in several U.S. polls, people who reported working 50-plus hours per week had the most flexible schedules of all! (See Golden, 2008; see also Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; DiRenzo, Greenhaus, & Weer, 2011.)

Consider findings from the National Survey of the Changing Workforce (NSCW), a U.S. poll that regularly monitors the hours that workers work (Families and Work Institute, 2009). The survey showed that by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the 40-hour workweek was a relic of the past. In 2002, the typical male worker spent an average of 49 hours a week on his so-called 40-hour-a-week job (Galinsky and others, 2005).

In the European Union, governments limit overwork by requiring member states to keep work time to less than 48 hours per week. Japan, with its routine 50-plus work-week, clocks in with the longest working hours in the developing world. But because the United States doesn’t regulate work hours, employers are free to “encourage” their employees to stay on their jobs as much as they can (Fuwa, 2014).

One force propelling the drive to work longer hours is job insecurity. Especially since the Great Recession of 2008, people know that unless they perform well, they are at risk of getting fired. So one co-worker at your law firm works 100 hours per week. In order to keep your job, you feel compelled to work 75. Soon, not working weekends and evenings is defined as slacking off.

Clearly these kinds of treadmill pressures limit our joy in a job. What specifically makes for career happiness and success?

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Suppose you wanted to predict which high school classmates would be successful at their careers. It’s a no-brainer that you might bet on the class valedictorian or your friend from an affluent family. But some of you may know Harvard Ph.D.s or people with billionaire parents who are failing miserably to live up to their career potential. What are these people missing in life?

Clues come from that regular University of Michigan poll exploring health behaviors and attitudes in different cohorts of teens (discussed in Chapter 9). At their first evaluation, sampling high schoolers in 1979, the researchers measured what they called “core self-evaluations”: whether a person had high self-esteem, was optimistic or depressed, and felt in control of his life. Among people who graduated college, this single evaluation from decades earlier predicted work success by early midlife! (See Judge & Hurst, 2007.)

Why do attitudes such as optimism and self-efficacy matter so much when we are on the college or graduate track? One reason is that people who generally feel good about themselves gravitate to more rewarding fields (Drago, 2011). So, given equal GPAs, your college classmates with high self-esteem will tend to “go for” a more fulfilling career.

Once at work, people who have high self-efficacy proactively shape their jobs. They seek realistic feedback from their supervisors and ask for the kind of support that will make them effective employees (W. Li and others, 2014; L. Li and others, 2014). Interestingly, one study, sampling Israeli workers, showed having this efficacious “workerlike” attitude made a special difference when people saw their jobs as less than meaningful (Steger and others, 2013). Anyone can become engaged in a job if they are lucky to have compelling work. The challenge is to find meaning in less-than-optimal jobs.

Other personality traits that go along with work success are having the emotion-regulation talents to disengage from job stress (Hülsheger and others, 2014) and gravitating to challenging tasks (Fossen & Vredenburgh, 2014). The goal is to view our job as a calling—perfectly expressing our identity, embodying our mission in life.

Are you blessed to see your work as a life calling? As I can tell you, there is no greater gratification than finding a career that you feel called to do. We might think that living a calling causes us to be committed to our work. One longitudinal study suggested the reverse. In a way similar to marriage, researchers found developing this feeling grew out of time spent committed to a career (Duffy and others, 2014). So, the reason I see writing textbooks as my life calling (it’s beshert!) came from years spent making writing the center of my life.

But seeing writing textbooks as my calling involved more than being committed to working hard. I lucked into a career that matched my personality!

Strategy 1: Match Career to Your Personality

According to John Holland’s (1997) classic theory, the key to work happiness is to find my kind of personality–career match. People who are sociable, those who crave continual human interaction, should not be textbook writers. If I needed to spend a lot of time outside, I would not be happy devoting days to scanning this computer screen. The closer we get to our ideal personality–career fit, Holland argues, the more satisfied and successful we can be at our jobs.

To promote this fit, Holland classifies six personality types, described in Table 11.5, and fits them to occupations. Based on their answers to items on a career inventory, people get a three-letter code, showing the three main categories into which they fit, in descending order of importance. If a person’s ranking is SAE (social, artistic, and entrepreneurial), that individual might find fulfillment directing an art gallery or managing a beautiful restaurant. If your code is SIE (social, investigative, and entrepreneurial), you might be better off marketing a new medicine for heart disease, or spending your work life as a practicing veterinarian.

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Still, even when people have found work that fits their personality, there is no guarantee that they will be happy at a job. What if your gallery director job involves mountains of paperwork and little time exercising your creative or social skills? Suppose your gallery is in financial trouble, and you have a micromanaging owner in charge? To find work happiness, it’s vital to consider the actual workplace too.

Strategy 2: Find an Optimal Workplace

What constitutes an ideal job situation? Workers agree that jobs should give us autonomy to exercise our creativity. We want caring colleagues, and organizations that are sensitive to our needs (Fossen & Vredenburgh, 2014). Remember from Chapter 7 that these same qualities—autonomy, nurturing, and relatedness—define ideal school environments. Ideally, we are looking for intrinsic career rewards—work that is fulfilling in itself.

Extrinsic career rewards, or external reinforcers, such as salary, can also be crucial, depending on a person’s situation. For instance, one longitudinal study showed intrinsic career rewards become less vital to work satisfaction as people (particularly men) moved through their twenties and had families—again suggesting that the breadwinner role remains a priority for twenty-first-century married men (Porfeli & Mortimer, 2010). As people age, they feel freer to focus more on enjoying working in itself (Kooij, Bal, & Kanfer, 2014; Allen & Finkelstein, 2014). Moreover, while money does not make for happiness, below a certain salary, family income has a dramatic impact on well-being. So, for the many workers who are struggling to make it from paycheck to paycheck, salary is a prime job concern. Unfortunately, having the luxury of viewing a job as an intrinsically gratifying, flow-inducing experience depends on having our “security needs” satisfied or knowing we can economically survive.

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Remember from Chapter 10 that flow states require that our skills match the demands of a given task. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that one poisonous job-related stress is “role ambiguity,” or a lack of clear work demands (Gilboa and others, 2008). If you are unsure of what people expect at your job, or have no guidelines as to how you can be effective, there is no chance of feeling “in flow.” If you are a nurse (and by extension, any worker), one Dutch study showed, feeling powerless to shape your work conditions is tailor-made to produce alienation (“I have to follow these ridiculous regulations. Plus I’m overwhelmed by paperwork, not patient care”) (Tummers & Den Dulk, 2013). A related problem is role overload—having way too much to do, to do an effective job—or role conflict—being torn between competing life demands.

This brings up the topic of family–work conflict. As hundreds of studies document, being pulled between the demands of a job and family is a major stress for women and men, especially during their parenting years (see, for example, Wattis, Standing, & Yerkes, 2013). But, without minimizing the fact that work-to-family conflict (“I feel guilty about not spending enough time with my son or daughter”) and family-to-work interference (“If I stay home with my sick child, I might get fired”) can cause anguish, a fulfilling job also energizes people to relate better as a parent or spouse (van Steenbergen, Kluwer, & Karney, 2014; Dunn & O’Brien, 2013; Gatrell and others, 2013).

How do women and men behave when faced with the competing pulls of family and career? For answers, let’s end this chapter with a status report on gender and work.

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The bottom line is that the women’s movement seems to have changed society (and our inner sex-role feelings) less than we thought. But if you think I’m advocating reverting back to the l950s Leave It to Beaver era, you are wrong. The great benefit of the lifestyle revolution is that today both women and men can express their human potential in work and love. The next chapter is all about expressing your human potential during adult life.

Question 11.11

1. Michael will change jobs more often than his grandpa.

2. Michael will work fewer hours per week than his grandpa.

3. Michael will have less traditional work hours than his grandpa.

a and c

Question 11.12

Vanessa’s isolated work environment doesn’t fit her sociable personality. She needs ample chances to interact with people during the day.

Question 11.13

1. Malia will probably take more time off from work for family caregiving.

2. Malia will probably earn less than her spouse.

3. Malia will probably be less well-educated than her spouse.

a and b

Question 11.14

still exist