Monthly Archives: April 2010

40−30−30

By nicemod | Published: April 21, 2010

Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gilbert has shown that we deal with fail­ure bet­ter than we’d expect. In stud­ies, “when peo­ple are asked to pre­dict how they’ll feel if they lose a job… or fail a con­test, they con­sis­tently over­es­ti­mate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.” In other words, “we over­es­ti­mate the inten­sity and dura­tion of our dis­tress in the face of future adversity.”

While we tend to focus solely on build­ing our skill sets or expand­ing our knowl­edge, the great­est advance­ment and learn­ing most often comes from action, expe­ri­ence, and tak­ing risk. And our regrets in life reflect this. Accord­ing to Gilbert, stud­ies show that “in the long run, peo­ple of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not hav­ing done things much more than they regret things they did.” –Michael Schwalbe, The 40−30−30 Rule, from The 99 Per­cent blog. via Destroyed by Design.

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On Meaningful Work

By nicemod | Published: April 20, 2010

“When Bor­genicht came home at night to his chil­dren, he may have been tired and poor and over­whelmed, but he was alive. He was his own boss. He was respon­si­ble for his own deci­sions and direc­tion. His work was com­plex: it engaged his mind and imag­i­na­tion. And in his work, there was a rela­tion­ship between effort and reward. […]

“Those three things—autonomy, com­plex­ity, and a con­nec­tion between effort and reward—are, most peo­ple agree, the three qual­i­ties that work has to have if it is to be sat­is­fy­ing. It is not how much money we make that ulti­mately makes us happy between nine to five. It’s whether out work ful­fills us.” –Mal­colm Glad­well, Out­liers, pp149-​​50.

I am slowly set­tling into an idea of what, to me, con­sti­tutes mean­ing­ful. I know that I need to be excited each day by what I do or I floun­der. Auton­omy, com­plex­ity and a con­nec­tion between effort and reward. I should alight every morn­ing with a ter­ror rat­tling through my bones – then I know I’m chal­lenged! Nav­i­gat­ing within the con­fines of that chal­lenge brings reward, but chal­lenge is the key.

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