Satisfaction is not the lack of dissatisfaction
Love your work, and you’ll never work a day in your life. Sounds great, but work ain’t no Caribbean cruise - one you pay for, and the other pays you. Work should be satisfying (SAT). You should be enjoying solving hard problems, getting opportunities to talk with like minded people, and even being forced to stretch and grow. Work should also cause you dissatisfaction (DSAT). Some days your boss will piss you off, your co-workers will misunderstand you, and you will be forced to do something you don’t want to. Satisfaction is not a lack of dissatisfaction they are orthogonal experiences. DSAT is what makes you sleep poorly, and SAT is what makes you set your alarm early Monday morning so you can get back to your favorite project, and to hang out with your awesome team. By understand our SAT and DSAT, we can change them, and transform hours slogging into time at the fantasy cruise bar.
Not all SAT and DSAT are created equal nor do they need to be correlated. You know you’ve got DSAT when you’re dreading going into work on Monday all weekend, feeling relieved your workday is over at 5pm, and being in a generally bad mood when talking to friends and family, or being unable to sleep at night. You know you have SAT when you wake up excited to work on a hard or interesting problem, a positive energy comes naturally when speaking with your team and cross-functional partners (for the most part), and not feeling like you need to zone out with 4 hours of TikTok to block out work.
Slightly out of place, but critical commentary: If you’re working with awesome people on a shitty problem, you’ll do well, and soon the problems will be fun. If you’re working with shitty people on an awesome problem, there will be much suffering, and very quickly you’ll be working with shitty people on a shitty problem.
General
What’s keeping you awake?
At the extremes, DSAT ruins your sleep. Be it unable to fall asleep, waking up in a panic angry at your co-worker, stressed you’ll fail, or dreading work the next morning. SAT is being so excited about your project, you get up early Sunday morning to sneak in a few extra hours because you love your project.
What about the time you’re not working?
I wish I spent more time at work, is never uttered on a deathbed. You have many roles other than work, and balancing between them is the name of the game. While high work SAT is great for your career, it makes stopping work hard.
At the same time, where you work, what you work on, and how challenging it is, when going well, like a giant snowball gathering speed down a hill, is infectious. That SAT will bring energy and resilience to the other roles in your life.
While it’s easy to stop working when you have low work SAT, that low SAT can be parasitic. It can lower your overall willpower and suck energy from the other roles in your life.
We all want to make the most of our lives. While not every breathing moment should be about work, what’s the point if what you do the majority of the time is mind-numbing or makes you grind a millimeter a month off your teeth.
The situation’s a 2x2 matrix
| DSAT/SAT | SAT High | SAT Low |
|---|---|---|
| DSAT High | Analysis Required | Time for a change |
| DSAT Low | Unicorn, stay as long as you can | Analysis Required! |
High SAT Low DSAT
You’ve arrived. But this will likely pass. Learn what’s working so you can replicate it later.
High DSAT, Low SAT
Urgent Change Required. Read Decisive, The Dip, and if required, re-roll.
High SAT High DSAT
This often oscillates between stressed as hell and amazing. These situations tend to be unsustainable.
Need to understand if the DSAT is structural or temporal, e.g., just launched then everything calms down, or you’re working with crappy people. If it’s structural, there’s an excellent chance the DSAT will grow into resentment, and you’ll need to re-roll.
Low DSAT, Low SAT
The hardest case. You’ve got a great gig, but something is missing.
Influencing change
There are two changes you’d like to make: increase your SAT, and decrease your DSAT.
Making the perfect job: Raising SAT
First, make nothing worse, you need to
Ring-fence your low SAT. Don’t let it:
- Affect your performance. When your performance tanks, DSAT will spike.
- Infect others. Emotions are contagious, and if others catch your low SAT, you’ll have problems soon.
- Ignore the things and people that are keeping your DSAT low. Without nurturing and reinforcement, they may stop.
- Drain your energy. See the low SAT as an opportunity to invest in some of your other roles.
Mine for gold: Increase your SAT:
Odds are you’re struggling with a lack of AMP (see next section),
You’ve got three paths:
Add stuff that brings you SAT. Pick up extra projects that bring you AMP.
Cut stuff that doesn’t bring you SAT.
Examine the things that don’t bring you SAT, and see what you can adjust to squeeze out more SAT. For example:
Sleeping well at night: Lowering DSAT
DSAT is often caused by people or structural problems. These are hard to influence.
Even when there are small improvements, you may have residual mental pain, which leaves you reactive, slowing your ability to lower DSAT.
Sometimes the right thing to do here is a re-roll.
Re-rolling: Changing teams or companies
When you have a structural problem and you can’t influence the changes you need (see The Dip), the right thing to do may be finding a new team or company.
While easy to think, it’s very easy to misassess the situation. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and sometimes the issue you think is your environment may be you. Before you go down this path, skim Decisive and listen to Switching Jobs or Staying Where You Are. It takes 30 minutes, but given how hard job changes are, I strongly recommend it.
If you’re still committed, check out: