While contemplating through Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - a must read for those seeking high achievements as well as born perfectionists - I stumbled across one particularly interesting aside about work-happiness correlation. As usually with Malcolm Gladwell, there was nothing surprisingly new about it but the way he presents the material and, more significantly, the variety of supporting examples, survey results and pure statistics provides a truly new insight into the problem. It calls for a short quote:
"... Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and connection between effort and reward - are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfils us. If I offered you a choice between being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,000 a year, which would you take? I'm guessing the former, because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between efford and reward in doing creative work, and that's worth more to most of us than money."
Isn't this simply wonderful? And later, "Work that fulfils those three criteria is meaningful. Being a teacher is meaningful..."
I must confess these very words not only inspired even more confidence, they prompted me to finish with my past so completely and forever that I even managed to turn off that job offer. And the most enoyable feeling of freedom and somewhat sillish happiness is the true sign that I was right.
Done at last!