St.Louis Business Journal
FINDING WORK SATISFACTION IS ABOUT MAKING INTELLIGENT TRADEOFFS

By Anna Navarro

June 2006  

Author's note: Client stories in this column are based on actual situations fictionalized to protect privacy and told with permission.

One of my favorite formulas for being happy at work is to spend most of your time doing what you really enjoy and as little time as possible doing what you don't. But there are situations where that approach just doesn’t work, however useful it is as a general guiding principle.

What if your perfect job doesn’t pay enough? Or it requires moving to another state and you have two kids in school you don’t want to disrupt? When issues like these emerge, you need a more complex framework to help you make decisions than just understanding what you like and dislike doing.

Sarah came to see me because she was at her wit's end trying to balance her work and her responsibilities as a mother. She had high expectations of herself in both roles.

After going through an in-depth analysis of what was really important to her, she finally acknowledged to herself that what she most wanted was to be a full time Mom. She and her husband, who had a successful solo practice as a consultant, decided they could live on his income if they cut their living expenses. The problem was that he was a serious diabetic and they relied on her employer for affordable health insurance.

The solution we ultimately came up with was for Sarah to work 10 hours a week for a former employer doing a job that was way below her skills. It was a job she had outgrown many years ago and that wasn’t particularly satisfying in itself. But her former employer was a person with whom she could be totally frank about her motivations for wanting to work part time. Her salary was barely enough to pay for childcare. The real payoff was the health insurance the family was able to obtain.

On the surface this solution seems to contradict the principle of basing your work on what you love doing. But it wasn’t really. What Sarah most wanted was time with her kids. Her part time job was the tradeoff for doing that.

Edward was a high school history teacher who loved teaching and working with kids. But he was having a hard time supporting his growing family on a teacher’s wages.

Our skills analysis showed that in addition to teaching kids, he was good at communication, helping others and managing paperwork. He didn’t want to relocate. After many years of a rigid teaching schedule, he also wanted some time flexibility

We brainstormed a half a dozen different careers and he systematically investigated them to see which one came closest to meeting his needs. The one that best matched his criteria was being a residential real estate agent.

Not having a predictable income was the biggest stumbling block, so we developed a plan for him to move into real estate sales slowly, to test it before making the leap. He sat for his real estate license during the fall and in the spring lined up a summer job assisting a very successful realtor for a small share of his commissions. By summer's end, he was sure he could make a living at it.

That school year he got a home equity line of credit to tide himself over during his start up. He also promoted his services to the teaching community. He started full time that second summer and within a few months was earning as much as he had as a teacher. Two years later he was nearly tripling his annual teaching salary.

In some ways, Edward enjoys the day-to-day activity of residential real estate less than teaching. He misses the kids and the joy he felt when they learned something new. But on balance, he's glad he made the change. He still uses skills he enjoys even though he doesn’t teach or work with kids. For him the financial rewards far outweigh that loss.

Both Edward and Sarah resolved their work dilemmas, at least for the current stage of their lives. They started with a thorough analysis of what was most important to them and gave up other things that were less important to get them. By making tough choices they gained a measure of control and satisfaction in their work that might have otherwise eluded them.

Work satisfaction isn’t about finding nirvana. It’s about knowing what you value and making intelligent tradeoffs to get it.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.