Here's why even your dream job won't be perfect
There’s nothing I’d rather be doing than my current job, but I’m dreading the inevitable moment where I’ll feel compelled to move on.
By August last year, I had published two bestselling books, and had secured a dream job as a journalist at a global media outlet. But now in 2023, I find myself asking: What else is there?
While I love my job, I know contentment can be difficult to maintain. It hasn’t yet happened, but I know that once I stop feeling challenged by work, I’ll want something new. Easy work gets boring — there’s not enough uncertainty as to whether you can overcome the day. Predictability can open the door to complacency.
I’m torn now because there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than my current role, but I’m dreading the inevitable moment where I’ll feel compelled to move on. Right now I am happy and challenged and satisfied. I learn something everyday.
Plus, with my job, I have energy outside work hours to ruminate on this website about personal development, how to write, books, and travel.
Nonetheless, happiness is the thing you feel just before you want something new, as Don Draper noted. Everyone needs a professional contingency plan, regardless if you’re working in a dream job. You need a potential Plan B, C, and D if things go south (“south” in my case meaning the need for a new challenge).
So, what next?
There must be a path forward, I say to myself, beyond merely getting better at my current role. Efficiency is indeed a mark of progress, but there’s a ceiling to that. Maxing out responsibilities and doing them faster can only last so long.
To Simone Stolzoff, the author of the coming book The Good Enough Job, one step to ease this conundrum can be disentangling your personal identity from your work.
“We live in a country that really idolizes work,” Stolzoff told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a lot of pressure to put on any one particular thing.”
He recommends nurturing a greater sense of purpose outside of your career. Rather than leaving a job that you like — a “good enough” job, he calls it — it can be more productive to get a new hobby or join a club.
In other words, unending career progress doesn’t have to be the barometer for fulfillment. It’s okay, Stolzoff maintains, for a job to furnish you with a paycheck and lifestyle without being your raison d'etre.
I agree with Stolzoff’s assessment, but those shifts can happen in parallel with brainstorming next steps. I’m cautious about waiting to the point where I'm too bored or unsatisfied before I begin mapping out alternatives. And that doesn’t mean mapping out an exit plan, but I’m trying to envision how my role could evolve, and me with it.
Professional and personal development shouldn’t be dependent on one another, as Stolzoff says, but they can’t exist individually in a vacuum. Progress in one domain ideally would entail progress in the other. The challenge lies in synching them up to the point where they are mutually productive but still don’t drag on each other if things aren’t optimal.
“There’s a monotony to every line of work that’s inevitable,” Stolzoff said. “If we’re expecting our jobs to always be perfect, it’s just an unrealistic bar.”
Complement this article with an interview with a designer on bringing art to life, a blog post breaking down ways to supercharge career growth, and how I relied on discipline to write two bestselling books without taking time off work.