For all of you who think, a dream job is about work satisfaction. Here comes the news, it is not about “your satisfaction”, its about how you “satisfy your work”. Satisfying the work that is expected of you is far more important.
For a long time and from too many sources I heard the same thing. Things like they are supposed to do these things at their job and they don’t like it. Many of my friends continuously crib about having a job that they don’t like.
Day after day people work at a job where every moment is painful. And then they vent out their frustration at their friends and family. What many of them don’t get is we are ourselves responsible for our own misery(or happiness). We behave on our evaluation of the current situation. Ever wondered why someone at your office is happy with what he/she does and puts in a great effort.
Let’s try to understand why “Satisfying the Work” is extremely crucial to success.
Satisfying the Work –> Growth
We all have a need. A need to grow ourselves and achieve glory. To contribute our greatest to fellow humans. To make something amazing. For all of the above we need to work. We have to sharpen our skills, slug it out and sometimes just keep pushing our boundaries. Sometimes this is painful.
Let this important thing be clear. When you choose a journey that is going to change your life, it will be very painful. An awesome journey is characterized by the amount of pain it brings. This pain makes us look back in the satisfaction of what we have achieved and the times we lived beyond our comfort zone. Your love for the mission and the importance of the work to you pushes you forward.
If you are feeling painful in pursuit of your destiny, that’s great. That’s exactly how it should be. If you are not stretching your limits, you are not growing.
If you are feeling painful in your current job, just give your best. Give your very best. Be disgusted about your situation, you should be. Otherwise you will not improve.But give your very best. If giving your very best does not help you to enjoy your work or rock your work(which will most certainly happen), you will most certainly outgrow it.
From my personal experiences, I learnt whenever I faced a painful situation, it was due to an internal belief. Just asking myself
- Why is it painful?
- How do I get rid of it?
- What can I do in the present situation to make the work more enjoyable?
These experiences taught me more about persistence and resilience than the good times. Crises and danger bring the best in you if taken head on and worked upon.
The next two points will show why we should give our 110% in our current situation.
Satisfying the Work –> Excellence
If you always give 110% no matter how or what you face. You continue to give your best when faced with paralysing conflicts and crisis situations. It becomes a habit.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
Since you are reading this website, I assume you do not like mediocrity and getting by. Instead you want to achieve something great and amazing. Excellence is one of the key ingredients of great successes.
You just cannot let the current job to rob you of your excellence. You should guard it in every possible way. Even if that means giving 110% in your work.
Satisfying the Work –> Recommendations
Suppose you are X. You work hard and give 110% at your workplace, your colleagues, subordinates and your bosses will all know.
What do you think, they will tell the another person when asked “What do you think about X?” Figure it out.
If you just laze around and cut corners, do you think you will get a glowing testimonial. NO way. To get those awesome testimonials and “word of mouth” publicity, give 110%. Do amazing and create amazing things.
Satisfying the Work –> Measurable Results
People don’t care what you feel inside but they surely see your output. In the society, one is judged by the results one achieves. What can you accomplish given the same set of resources? What could you achieve 15 years before?
Surely, your ability to create results has changed for the better. That is the yardstick to measuring your growth.
Results don’t lie. They reflect of what we are capable of. So if you are not achieving a certain standard, something needs to be changed or corrected.
Satisfying the Work –> True Satisfaction
The joy of knowing you have created something is priceless. True satisfaction comes from growing ourselves and crisis situations often bring out our best(only if we confront them).
Do you love washing dishes?
I do. It gives me a sense of satisfaction as I clean all of them diligently and put the clean ones away one by one.
No matter what I do, I try to give my 110%. Sometimes I do fail but I know this is the only way forward. I am not perfect but it is the quest for perfection that drives me forward.
So to all of you awesome people who are reading this. Enjoy and rock every moment. Just remember you are awesome. Believe in yourself. 
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3 Responses to Work Satisfaction is Irrelevant
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Disagreed. It is one thing to perform your job with excellence–and another thing to consider the possibility of doing what you have no interest in with utter passion, or the way you talk about it, sir.
We are not machines who should eventually be robust and adjust to the environment, and “give 110%”. We have our own innate inclinations–own desires. Only if a man has not yet found what he loves, or what he is comfortable doing, should he try to accept what life has given him–that too, only for the sole reason that his work is his means to living.
But it will be sad if we accept our dissatisfaction with our job, and base our actions on the reasoning that “People will think I’m lazy if I don’t work with enthusiasm”. We should, in the end–whenever given the chance, have the least of courage that is needed to live a rewarding life, respect our self-esteem and self-respect and do what gives us happiness, even if it is working for a job that is low on remuneration but high on satisfaction.
Hi Naman, I agree with your point only partly. I am not talking about going on under conditions of exploitation or when you hate something. One should definitely quit under such conditions.
But people under deliver and quit under pressure even while following their passions. They jump from one thing to another, not doing justice to what they promise to do. And then they say that they were not satisfied with the work. That is the point I want to make.
And finally, thanks for reading the article and commenting.
[...] very big thanks to Naman. His criticism of the post Work Satisfaction is Irrelevant forced me to question [...]