Financial Freedom Engineer: 26/2/2022
Enjoying your job is a really important skill. Even if you’re pushing really hard in order to retire early and escape a job that you hate it’s likely that you’ll still need around 10 years to become financially independent. Since you’re going to be spending most of your waking hours on work, it’s best to learn to enjoy it.
FIRE is not a cure all
I need to first start by saying that there are some people that blame work for all of their issues in life. This, inevitably, leads them to think that becoming financially independent and quitting work will solve all of their problems. If you have this extremely negative mindset then I’ll tell you now that once you quit work, you’ll just find something else to blame and life will be just as shitty as before. Instead, you need to think about FIRE as a tool that provides you with the option to do what you want with your time by reducing your reliance on earning an income through full time work. What you do with that time is a key determinant of how happy/satisfied you’ll be. With that being said, here are my top tips on learning to enjoy your job.
Seek mastery
When I was in primary school, my parents sent to me to learn Mandarin every Saturday morning. I hated the fact that while I was stuck wrote learning Mandarin characters, every other kid was probably doing something much more fun. As a result, I turned off my brain; rejected the teaching; and didn’t participate at all. At the time I thought I was a smart cookie by rebelling, but as an adult I realize that this was one of the biggest mistakes in my life. Not only do I not know any Mandarin but turning my mind off in that way caused me to dread every minute of it. Since then, I’ve had my fair share of boring classes; pointless work meetings and boring tasks but what I’ve realized since is that things become much more enjoyable when I shift my attention away from how crappy it is to how I can become better at it. So, these days, I try to take notes during boring meetings rather than staring at the clock and I’ll choose to challenge my learning capability rather than focus on how boring/pointless the task is. Remember that there is always something to be learned, and opportunities for learning are a great privilege.
Actively look search for things you enjoy
One of the best tips for enjoying work that I’ve heard was to name 3 things you enjoy about your job and look for those things each day. I find this incredibly powerful in tuning your mind towards viewing your working a positive, rather than negative way. I find that joy can be found in even seemingly mundane things, like how well you formatted a report or how neatly a pallet of goods has been stacked.
Learn to negotiate
Being a ‘yes man’ makes us feel like we’re doing a good job, but often, it leads to us taking on more work than we can handle. As a result, we produce work at a lower quality and become stressed out which leads to us disliking our jobs and become cynical about work in general. Of, course not all work tasks can be negotiated in your favor but attempting to lengthen deadlines; reduce the scope of your tasks; or even question if it is part of your role goes a long way to increasing the day-to-day enjoyment of work.
Build your employability
One of the big reasons why we dislike work is the feeling that we are trapped – we are there because we have to be, not because we want to be. This is where having options is super important. One way to do this is to be financially independent, but if that’s not an option yet then making yourself extremely employable is the next best option. If you’re highly sort after then you have options to move, and possible charge more, for your services. It goes without saying that to do this you need to work hard; build business relationships; and increase your skills/experience. These are all things that show you can add value to an organization.
Realize that you don’t have to participate in the rat race
As mentioned earlier, feeling trapped negatively affects our feelings about having to be at work. How ‘trapped’ we are is often a result of our own aspirations and the choices that we make. While having an expensive house; enjoying 5-star hotels; or expensive hobbies all seem like we are living our best lives; they are actually ways that we mentally trap ourselves into high paying jobs that we don’t enjoy. While enjoying life is important, many of these things need to be enjoyed in moderation. It’s important to realize that these decisions should be conscious choices and we should take into account their effect on our financial situations. While this isn’t strictly job related, not participating in the rat race as contributed to us to becoming financially secure and allowed me to focus on being a better engineer. This, unexpectedly, has made my job more enjoyable.
Engineer your freedom