Work, philosophy, and .... vedantam?

"I like the way you teach" said one.  "I read your blog and was 'wow'" said another.

I am like Ed Koch in asking "how am I doing?"  Though, well, I don't actually walk around asking that question, as much as I am tempted to.  Thus, it is always wonderful when I get answers to that question of "how am I doing?" even when I didn't provide that prompt.

To me, work has never been about a paycheck. Of course, the paycheck is important.  But, there is more to work than a paycheck. Way, way more.

Who better to talk philosophically about work than Vedantam!

Ok, not that vedantam but Shankar Vedantam, who reports on why people agree to work in boring jobs:

VEDANTAM:... There's new psychological research out of Duke University. I spoke with Peter Ubel, along with a colleague, David Comerford. He's looked at people who do boring work. He asked me to imagine applying for a job at a museum where the job was to stand around for several hours a day telling people not to touch the paintings.
GREENE: We've all seen those people.
VEDANTAM: Exactly. Ubel says there's a difference between how you think about the job when you're applying for it, and your actual experience of such a job.
PETER UBEL: At the time, it might sound like a wonderful job - I just stand there and do nothing, and they pay me for it. Wow; that sounds great. But now, imagine standing there all day long while people are walking about the museum enjoying themselves. You're not even allowed to really talk to them much. I cannot imagine a more boring job.
VEDANTAM: So I think the thing that he's talking about here, David, is the idea that when you're anticipating the kind of work that you want to do, how you think about it might be very different than the actual experience of the job, when you're doing it.

My job is, of course, no way a boring one like standing around in a museum.  But, I have paid my dues in boring jobs. Like the first one straight out of the engineering program.  Or the second one. Or the third ... or the fourth .... well, I have had more than my fill of boring jobs. Perhaps that is all the more why I enjoy this one, so much so that every once in a while I feel strange that I get paid for what I like doing.

So, why do people choose to go after those boring jobs anyway?

VEDANTAM: But I think what Ubel and Comerford are basically saying is even when we have a choice, we often end up picking the more boring job. They ran this experiment with business school students. They sat the students in a classroom and said: For the next five minutes, you will do absolutely nothing - no iPhones, no computers - and we'll pay you $2.50.
But they gave them an option. They said: Instead of sitting and doing nothing, you could solve these really difficult word puzzles. How much would you want us to pay you?
UBEL: We found that a large majority of the students said we'd have to pay them more than $2.50 to solve the word puzzles, and yet when we actually finished the five minutes and asked them how much they enjoyed those five minutes, the people solving the word puzzles enjoyed the five minutes significantly more. And yet very few of them said yeah, pay me $2 and I'd be happy to do word puzzles 'cause at least I'll be having fun.
GREENE: So they thought they should be paid more to do these puzzles, thinking it was harder work. But actually, doing something during that time actually turned out to be more interesting for them.

Yep, we are one strange species!

Vedantam links his report to Camus' interpretation of the myth about Sisyphus.  Oh yeah, I have blogged about that, too. (Are you sufficiently impressed, R & S?)  Well, enough about me; how does Vedantam tie it all together?

when you make choices, make them consciously. Make them deliberately. Don't let unconscious biases guide you. Camus would even go a step further and say, even when choices are forced on you, live your life with your eyes open because meaning doesn't lie in the work, it lies in what you bring to the work.

Students, and colleagues too, know what exactly I bring to my work. I think I know the answer to "how am I doing?"  .