Job satisfaction vs life satisfaction: two scores.
Job satisfaction vs life satisfaction is the distinction that resolves an apparent contradiction. The self-employed are more satisfied with their work, yet less satisfied with their whole lives than they predicted. Both statements describe the same people on the same day, because the two measures do not move together.
The contradiction with chapter 4.
Chapter 4 showed that across twenty-three countries, self-employed people rate their work well above employees. Also, most of that gap came down to autonomy and more interesting work. However, this chapter says the forecast is wrong. So you might fairly feel annoyed, because both claims seem impossible together.
Why job satisfaction vs life satisfaction differ.
Chapter 4 measured job satisfaction, while this chapter measures life satisfaction. You can love your work more than ever and still find your life roughly unchanged. That is because your life also contains your health, your sleep and the people in it. It contains your mother and the state of your back as well.
What you are really buying.
When you pictured the year after leaving, were you picturing better work or a better life? They cost different amounts, and only one is reliably on the shelf. Therefore the honest purchase is a better job, bought with hours from the rest of your life. That is not nothing, but it is not the picture in your head.
Separate your two scores tonight.
Write one sentence describing the better work you imagine, and one describing the better life.
Then mark which of those two sentences a business could reliably deliver.
From the book.
Chapter 4 measures job satisfaction and this chapter measures life satisfaction, and those are not the same thing, and they do not move together. You can be genuinely more satisfied with your work than you have ever been in your life and still find that your life as a whole has stayed roughly where it was, because your life as a whole contains your health, and the people in it, and your sleep, and your mother, and the state of your back.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 6: You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong
Questions about job satisfaction vs life satisfaction.
How does job satisfaction vs life satisfaction explain the research?
The self-employed score higher on work, yet lower than predicted on life overall. Both findings are true at once.
Why doesn't better work make my whole life better?
Because your life also includes health, sleep, family and relationships, which a new job may not change.
Is starting a business still worth it then?
It can be, if you want a better job and accept paying with hours from the rest of your life.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 6, “You are guessing how it will feel, and the guess is wrong”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Impact bias: why you misjudge future feelings.
- 02 Focusing illusion: why your job gets too much weight.
- 03 Self employed life satisfaction: the five-year gap.
- 04 Job satisfaction vs life satisfaction: two scores.
- 05 Hedonic adaptation: why autonomy does not wear off.
- 06 Impact bias criticism: what the research can claim.
- 07 Mood diary: a one-line log for two weeks.
- 08 Arrival fallacy: what reaching a goal really felt like.