“Choose a job you love and you will never work a day in your life” – Confucius
As a business architect, my interest is in designing strategies that help people achieve their goals. In his Ted Talk, Shane Lopez provides you with strategies to help you design the job of your dreams.
Shane is a psychologist and wrote the bestselling book: Positive Psychology: An Exploration of Human Strengths. He lists 5 design keys to crafting your dream job. In other words, taking your current job and making the subtle changes to make it better.
Test drive your future – This means to take time to dream about your future and what you want to achieve. Unfortunately, many people stop dreaming once they land the job and they focus on allowing the job to shape their future instead of shaping the job to ensure it provides joy and happiness.
Trust your gut – This means to spend more face time with those people on the job that help your career and you feel good about and less face time with those who don’t.
Play to your strengths – Shane says, “doing what you do best makes you feel better and work better.”
Kraft your job – in such a way that it works for your rhythm. For example, if you are more detailed oriented in the morning then make sure all your analytic work is scheduled in the morning and then push off answer emails into the afternoon. Design a day that works for you.
Shop for a Good Boss – spend your time looking for a great boss to work for and do what it takes to work for that boss if possible. I also recommend that if you can’t work for that boss directly then make that boss your mentor.
“Happiness depends or the goodness or our jobs, and those jobs are made and not found” – Shane Lopez
Please enjoy the video and tell me what you think. What techniques do you use to improve the quality of your job?
Its a great quote, but don’t think that was Confucius, the job market was a little different in Ancient China.
true. most likely a paraphrase of his wisdom.