The deeper I get in my career, the more I believe that professional happiness comes from identifying your values and then living by them.
The more I let my values become the north star of my career, the happier I become.
My personal values (in order of importance):
- freedom
- doing work I find meaningful
- integration of work and life (meaning I’m not chained to a desk 9-5, with life existing separately)
- making a large amount of money
I got a tempting job offer last month. The salary was twice anything I’d been offered before.
It was meaningful work, but accepting would’ve required me to give up my freedom, and I wasn’t willing to do that. I declined it.
At the start of my career, I skipped college because I didn’t want to be beholden to debt. Working for Praxis was the clearest path to becoming more free (and doing work I found meaningful – because what’s more meaningful than building an alternative to college?).
Then I was able to work remotely, which granted me even more freedom. I was able to do life side by side with work (building a new Praxis curriculum out of a Colorado coffee shop at the foot of the mountains? Yes please).
Early this year, I realized that freelancing made me even more free. No hours, flexible project schedule, AND I could optimize my projects around work I found meaningful (and have since worked with FEE, OSI, and Edvo, to name a few).
Once the freedom and meaning boxes are checked, then I can optimize for capital – but never at the expense of those greater values.
I have friends who are the opposite, and who value money most, and couldn’t care less if their job is meaningful. There’s no right or wrong hierarchy of values – only what’s true for you.
Finding your values is an emergent process. You aren’t born able to articulate all the things you value.
But in my experience, it’s important to figure out what you value most – because the more aligned your life and your values are, the happier you’ll be.