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You Don’t Have to Love Your Job

- Adam Clare

Too many people are told to follow their passion and find their dream job above all else. This is bad advice. Instead, go get a job that you can do, pays you well, and is filled with respect. There is no reason to be a sycophant at work.

Sarah Jaffe recently wrote a book titled Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone and in it she explores our modern and utterly bizarre expectation that you should love your job. Over at the Next Big Idea Club she highlighted five key points from her book, and it’s worth looking at.

2. The idea that we should like our work is actually a relatively new concept.

The way we work and the way we think about work have changed over time. And so while humans have long been presumed to do some kinds of work for the love of it, that’s an expectation that has grown and spread from a couple of types of work to pretty much everything. The idea that we work in order to find fulfillment, rather than a paycheck, wasn’t particularly widespread even just a couple of generations ago. When you’re digging coal or building cars for a living, no one expects you to do it because you like it. You did it because it paid decently—or because it paid at all.

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A High Minimum Wage is Good for Everybody

- Adam Clare

happy workers in a factory

Raising the minimum wage helps you no matter how much you earn. The next time the debate about whether or not your region of the world should raise wages you ought to argue for rating wages. The only downside of getting paid more is that…well, nothing really. Don’t believe the lies that raising minimum wage increases leads to job losses because there’s no evidence that that is the case.

Economist Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who is perhaps the leading expert on the economic impact of the minimum wage, and his co-authors Doruk Cengiz (also at UMass), Attila Lindner of University College London, and Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute conducted the study. They used detailed data and advanced statistical methods to parse the effects of minimum-wage increases on low-skilled workers—including those making at or around the minimum wage—as well as on high-skilled workers and the economy as a whole.

The study finds that minimum-wage increases occurring over more than three-and-a-half decades resulted in higher wages for low-skilled workers, with no reduction in low-wage employment five years out. This was true overall, and separately for younger workers, less educated workers, and minorities. Low-wage workers saw a wage gain of 7 percent after an increase in the minimum wage.

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Four Day Work Weeks Increase Productivity, Decrease Stress

- Adam Clare
subway transit

Working a job that is free of stress is rare, however there’s an easy way to make your current job less stressful: work four days instead of five. This is obvious, but what might not be obvious to some is that a four day work week is just as productive as a five day week. One of the largest companies in New Zealand tested a four day week with their employees and found great success and now other companies are looking to them to learn about it.

Analysis of one of the biggest trials yet of the four-day working week has revealed no fall in output, reduced stress and increased staff engagement, fuelling hopes that a better work-life balance for millions could be in sight.

Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done, a study of the trial released on Tuesday has revealed.

The trial was monitored by academics at the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. Among the Perpetual Guardian staff they found scores given by workers about leadership, stimulation, empowerment and commitment all increased compared with a 2017 survey.


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2017 is the Year to Quit Your Job

- Adam Clare

construction
Until we get something like universal basic income everybody will need to work. But why should you work in a job you don’t want?

James Altucher argues that this year, more than any previous year, is the right time to quit your job. Why? Because the robots will make us all unemployed and that starting your company has never been easier. If you are thinking of quitting your job or are looking for a new adventure maybe now is the time.

H) YOU DON’T NEED THE JOB TO BE HAPPY
Depression is highest in fully employed, first world countries. The two highest countries for depression? France and the United States.
We simply were not made to work 60 hours a week. Archaeologists figure that our paleo ancestors “worked” maybe 12 hours a week.
And then they would play, in order to keep up the skills needed to hunt and forage, etc.

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Thanks to the Flea!

Your Next Job Should be Fun

- Adam Clare

work and smile

As humans we tend to prefer short term rewards over long term gains and this is true even in a job search. We don’t think about the day to day of life when we think about the dream job – or just the next job. When you are looking for a new job think about what is fun for you. Having a good time at your job is more important than getting a higher salary.

It looks like the old adage “do what you love” could be true after all.

In the workplace, we are similarly well aware that it is much easier to get out of bed in the morning if our job is interesting and our colleagues are fun to be around. But we care much less about such benefits when we apply for a future job. We fail to realize that the person we are in the present — the one who values intrinsic benefits — is awfully similar to the person we will be in the future.

This failure to know ourselves is not unique to employees. Gymgoers, for example, say it is important that their present workout is fun and relaxing, yet they care less about whether their future workout provides these benefits as long as it helps them stay in shape. The result is that people often sign up for the wrong gym class — the one that is best at maximizing delayed health benefits yet fails to deliver an enjoyable experience in the moment.

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