Magnificent Career
Good day, habra people!
Like many, I have been working in IT for quite a long time and some time ago I got to the state of “how it all upset”. A desire to change not just a job, but a field of activity in general, flowed out of this state. After a couple of attempts, I came to the conclusion (fairly obvious) that it is more profitable to stay, especially in a crisis.
The next step was the question of how to do so that the work did not cause disgust, but ideally - like. Because over time, absolutely everything gets boring, then do so that you like this some conscious effort. The main problem with this is that it is not known for certain how to do this. A lot of different solutions are offered, but what I saw on me did not make much of an impression, for various reasons. And the other day I came across an interesting article, a free translation of which I bring to your attention. Although this article discusses the approach to building a career in general, I think that in each particular job you can find what to improve using this approach.
Actually article ...
')
The great career
Laura loves what she does. For many people, including me (and I have known her for the past 5 years), she represents the platonic ideal of an excellent career.
Laura is a database genius. Companies hire her to comb their most backfired data into elegant structures. If you are lucky enough to hire her, she will assemble a team of selected programmers and will live in your office for up to six months. Then she will take your generous check and fly away to her charming little house near Boston to find new ways to spend money.
She can skip months between projects - the payment is high enough to afford as much vacation as she wants. She uses this time to, among other things, get a pilot's license, learn how to scuba dive, and travel around Asia.
Principle of introspection
Among the writers of the books “How to make a career”, the principle of introspection is very popular, which in short is to assess your inclinations and desires, and somehow make it so that you can make a living using them. Often this approach is described as “a source of satisfaction and great success.” Also, this principle is often extended beyond career building, using it for setting goals in life in general.
The principle of introspection is so ingrained that it is often forgotten that this is the same hypothesis as all the others and, like all the others, requires verification.
My question is very simple: when we look at people like Laura, who love what they do, does their self-analytical coincidence between their work and their personality explain their happiness? And if not, what explains?
To answer this question, we will have to turn to the leading scientific research that has been going on for 30 years.
The amazing science of human motivation
As Dan Pink tells us in his introduction to “Drive,” his book about motivation at work, our understanding of what makes people act was turned upside down in the late 1940s. Up to this point, common sense has said that people are motivated by reward. The greater the reward, the more people want to work.
Then Harry Harlow, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, began to give Rhesus monkeys to puzzles in his primate lab. He noticed an interesting effect: when he rewarded monkeys for solving problems, they began to cope worse.
20 years later, Edward Deci (Edward Deci), at that time Carnegie Mellon graduate, tested this effect on people and got a similar result: getting money dulled people when solving non-standard puzzles.
This was followed by 30 years of intensive research on human motivation.
In the end, Desi, working with his longtime co-author Richard Ryan, brought a variety of (often controversial) research on this topic into one comprehensive model called Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This model has been repeatedly confirmed and summarizes all of our knowledge about what leads to the fact that a person begins to love what he does. (A good review of the research of Ryan and Desi can be found in the journal Psychological Inquiry).
Simply put, the SDT states the following:
To bring happiness, work must meet three universal psychological requirements: autonomy, competence and affection.
In details…
* Autonomy means that you control how you spend your time. As Desi explains, when you have a high degree of autonomy, then "you support your actions to the greatest extent."
* Competence means the ability to do something useful masterfully. As psychologist Robert White (Robert White) suggests, people have a "tendency to impact the environment, as well as achieve valuable results in it."
* Attachment means a sense of connectedness with others. As Desi accurately noted: “love and care, and be loved and cared for.”
The SDT explains why Laura’s career evokes a response. She obviously has autonomy (she chooses projects herself and works on them according to her schedule) and competence (she is highly respected and accordingly awarded for her expert skills). She also has affection, with her well-knit teams and with her family and friends, thanks to the opportunity to spend more time with them.
Exposing the principle of introspection
The SDT answers the question: Is the principle of introspection valid? The key feature of the three SDT requirements is their versatility — they extend to different career areas and different career cultures. In other words: three decades of research have shown that the characteristics that make us happy at work have little to do with our personality and desires.
This study will greatly help those who worry a lot about such things. It makes no sense to lose sleep because of the question "is this the work of which I would like to do all my life." The way to work correctly will by itself lead to a suitable job.
Our next goal is “work right” ...
Work properly
Research shows that autonomy, competence and affection are the key to loving what you do. So how do you reach them? There is a mass of answers, but, in my opinion, the best strategy consists of two simple parts:
1. Masterfully master a rare and valuable skill.
2. Invest your career achievements in the right rewards.
The world does not owe you anything. Your boss is not obliged to allow you to choose a project for yourself, or spend a week from a working month writing novels in a beach house. These are valuable rewards. To get them you need to collect your own career capital by mastering a skill that is rare and valuable.
However, it is equally important to invest this capital, when it is collected, in the correct rewards. The word "correct" here is defined by the characteristic features of the SDT. In other words, as soon as you gain something valuable for your employer, use it to gain autonomy, competence, and affection as much as you can fit into your life.
This explains, for example, why there are many CEOs in the world who are excellent in what they do, but at the same time they are tense, restless and unhappy. They have amassed career capital by becoming excellent in management, but instead of investing it in something that, as we know, would make them happy, they exchanged it for greater prestige and income. The great demands of their work sucks everything out of their sense of autonomy, while affection goes away during late drinks at work.
Returning to Laura, we see that she is a great example of this system. In the 90s she began working for one of the largest technology companies. She noted that the huge databases that are the core of the company's business are becoming increasingly important for the success of the company as a whole. She focused on mastering these systems. With the continuation of the technological boom, her skills became increasingly rare and valuable. Instead of investing her accomplishments and becoming an overloaded vice president, she used an approach that maximized her autonomy, competence, and affection — she became a freelancer.
From myself: I like the idea of freelance very much, for various reasons, and as a result, Laura’s example from this article doesn’t impress me much. However, in spite of this, my experience speaks in favor of the SDT: my work allows me to work on my own schedule (freebies, myself, I don’t have any), they appreciate me (kmk), and I know how to do anything useful for work, and with it I consider my current place of work to be the best of what I had to get involved with. Personally, this article allowed us to shake our views and attitudes to work and, in general, suggested the direction for further movement.
It will be good if it is useful to someone else.
Like many, I have been working in IT for quite a long time and some time ago I got to the state of “how it all upset”. A desire to change not just a job, but a field of activity in general, flowed out of this state. After a couple of attempts, I came to the conclusion (fairly obvious) that it is more profitable to stay, especially in a crisis.
The next step was the question of how to do so that the work did not cause disgust, but ideally - like. Because over time, absolutely everything gets boring, then do so that you like this some conscious effort. The main problem with this is that it is not known for certain how to do this. A lot of different solutions are offered, but what I saw on me did not make much of an impression, for various reasons. And the other day I came across an interesting article, a free translation of which I bring to your attention. Although this article discusses the approach to building a career in general, I think that in each particular job you can find what to improve using this approach.
Actually article ...
')
The great career
Laura loves what she does. For many people, including me (and I have known her for the past 5 years), she represents the platonic ideal of an excellent career.
Laura is a database genius. Companies hire her to comb their most backfired data into elegant structures. If you are lucky enough to hire her, she will assemble a team of selected programmers and will live in your office for up to six months. Then she will take your generous check and fly away to her charming little house near Boston to find new ways to spend money.
She can skip months between projects - the payment is high enough to afford as much vacation as she wants. She uses this time to, among other things, get a pilot's license, learn how to scuba dive, and travel around Asia.
Principle of introspection
Among the writers of the books “How to make a career”, the principle of introspection is very popular, which in short is to assess your inclinations and desires, and somehow make it so that you can make a living using them. Often this approach is described as “a source of satisfaction and great success.” Also, this principle is often extended beyond career building, using it for setting goals in life in general.
The principle of introspection is so ingrained that it is often forgotten that this is the same hypothesis as all the others and, like all the others, requires verification.
My question is very simple: when we look at people like Laura, who love what they do, does their self-analytical coincidence between their work and their personality explain their happiness? And if not, what explains?
To answer this question, we will have to turn to the leading scientific research that has been going on for 30 years.
The amazing science of human motivation
As Dan Pink tells us in his introduction to “Drive,” his book about motivation at work, our understanding of what makes people act was turned upside down in the late 1940s. Up to this point, common sense has said that people are motivated by reward. The greater the reward, the more people want to work.
Then Harry Harlow, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, began to give Rhesus monkeys to puzzles in his primate lab. He noticed an interesting effect: when he rewarded monkeys for solving problems, they began to cope worse.
20 years later, Edward Deci (Edward Deci), at that time Carnegie Mellon graduate, tested this effect on people and got a similar result: getting money dulled people when solving non-standard puzzles.
This was followed by 30 years of intensive research on human motivation.
In the end, Desi, working with his longtime co-author Richard Ryan, brought a variety of (often controversial) research on this topic into one comprehensive model called Self-Determination Theory (SDT). This model has been repeatedly confirmed and summarizes all of our knowledge about what leads to the fact that a person begins to love what he does. (A good review of the research of Ryan and Desi can be found in the journal Psychological Inquiry).
Simply put, the SDT states the following:
To bring happiness, work must meet three universal psychological requirements: autonomy, competence and affection.
In details…
* Autonomy means that you control how you spend your time. As Desi explains, when you have a high degree of autonomy, then "you support your actions to the greatest extent."
* Competence means the ability to do something useful masterfully. As psychologist Robert White (Robert White) suggests, people have a "tendency to impact the environment, as well as achieve valuable results in it."
* Attachment means a sense of connectedness with others. As Desi accurately noted: “love and care, and be loved and cared for.”
The SDT explains why Laura’s career evokes a response. She obviously has autonomy (she chooses projects herself and works on them according to her schedule) and competence (she is highly respected and accordingly awarded for her expert skills). She also has affection, with her well-knit teams and with her family and friends, thanks to the opportunity to spend more time with them.
Exposing the principle of introspection
The SDT answers the question: Is the principle of introspection valid? The key feature of the three SDT requirements is their versatility — they extend to different career areas and different career cultures. In other words: three decades of research have shown that the characteristics that make us happy at work have little to do with our personality and desires.
This study will greatly help those who worry a lot about such things. It makes no sense to lose sleep because of the question "is this the work of which I would like to do all my life." The way to work correctly will by itself lead to a suitable job.
Our next goal is “work right” ...
Work properly
Research shows that autonomy, competence and affection are the key to loving what you do. So how do you reach them? There is a mass of answers, but, in my opinion, the best strategy consists of two simple parts:
1. Masterfully master a rare and valuable skill.
2. Invest your career achievements in the right rewards.
The world does not owe you anything. Your boss is not obliged to allow you to choose a project for yourself, or spend a week from a working month writing novels in a beach house. These are valuable rewards. To get them you need to collect your own career capital by mastering a skill that is rare and valuable.
However, it is equally important to invest this capital, when it is collected, in the correct rewards. The word "correct" here is defined by the characteristic features of the SDT. In other words, as soon as you gain something valuable for your employer, use it to gain autonomy, competence, and affection as much as you can fit into your life.
This explains, for example, why there are many CEOs in the world who are excellent in what they do, but at the same time they are tense, restless and unhappy. They have amassed career capital by becoming excellent in management, but instead of investing it in something that, as we know, would make them happy, they exchanged it for greater prestige and income. The great demands of their work sucks everything out of their sense of autonomy, while affection goes away during late drinks at work.
Returning to Laura, we see that she is a great example of this system. In the 90s she began working for one of the largest technology companies. She noted that the huge databases that are the core of the company's business are becoming increasingly important for the success of the company as a whole. She focused on mastering these systems. With the continuation of the technological boom, her skills became increasingly rare and valuable. Instead of investing her accomplishments and becoming an overloaded vice president, she used an approach that maximized her autonomy, competence, and affection — she became a freelancer.
From myself: I like the idea of freelance very much, for various reasons, and as a result, Laura’s example from this article doesn’t impress me much. However, in spite of this, my experience speaks in favor of the SDT: my work allows me to work on my own schedule (freebies, myself, I don’t have any), they appreciate me (kmk), and I know how to do anything useful for work, and with it I consider my current place of work to be the best of what I had to get involved with. Personally, this article allowed us to shake our views and attitudes to work and, in general, suggested the direction for further movement.
It will be good if it is useful to someone else.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92564/
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