Work Your Money, Not Your Life

Chapter 3How's Your Job?

“How's it going?” is a phrase a lot of us probably hear and say at least 10 times a day. I remember greeting my banking colleagues with this line every Monday morning. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get a response most of the time: we all knew how it was going (read: not well), and besides, I had seen most of these people on Sunday working in the office, so I knew damn well how they were doing. Occasionally, someone would reply by saying, “Livin' the dream,” but what they really meant was, “I'm living a baaad dream,” or “I wish I got enough sleep to have dreams.” A bunch of us would laugh in agreement, and then we'd go off to start our work.

During those years, I knew my situation was far from ideal – but beyond the long hours and lack of sleep, I had trouble pinpointing why. In a lot of ways, my role checked many of the boxes I had set for myself. I now realize that I had overlooked certain aspects of job satisfaction while overemphasizing others.

It turns out, job satisfaction can and should be evaluated on a number of levels. Whether you feel great, terrible, or blah about your job, it's helpful to figure out why you feel that way. And that's exactly what you'll be doing in this chapter.

Here's the plan. I'll walk you through five aspects of your job and provide questions for you to review in each area. You can use Table 3.1 at the end of the chapter to capture your responses (also available at www.workyourmoneybook.com) or simply make mental notes – whatever ...