Finding your dream job: how helping others can help you find career fulfilment

We all want to find a dream job that’s enjoyable and meaningful, but what does that actually mean?

Some people imagine that the answer involves discovering their passion through a flash of insight, while others think that the key elements of their dream job are that it be easy and highly paid.

After a review of two decades of research into the causes of a satisfying life and career, and drawing on over 60 studies, not much evidence has been found for these views. Instead, six key ingredients of a dream job were discovered; and they don’t include income, neither are they as simple as “following your passion”.

In fact, following your passion can lead you astray. Steve Jobs was passionate about Zen Buddhism before entering technology. Condoleezza Rice was a talented classical musician before she started studying politics.

Rather, you can develop passion while doing work that you will find enjoyable and meaningful. The key is to get good at something that helps other people.

The bottom line

Here are the six key ingredients of a dream job:

1. Work you’re good at;
2. Work that helps others;
3. Engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow (freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback);
4. Supportive colleagues;
5. A job that meets your basic needs, like fair pay, a short commute and reasonable hours;
6. A job that fits your personal life.

Most importantly, focus on getting good at something that helps others. It’s the right thing to do.

To have a dream job, don’t worry too much about money and stress, and don’t endlessly self-reflect to find your one true passion. Rather, get good at something that helps others. It’s best for you, and it’s best for the world.

The idea that helping others is the key to being fulfilled is hardly a new one. It’s even a theme from most major moral and spiritual traditions:

Set your heart on doing good, do it over and over again and you will be filled with joy, said Buddha; A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world, said Muhammad; Love your neighbour as you love yourself, said Jesus Christ; and Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness, said Martin Luther King, Jr.

Go ahead today, and get good at doing something that helps others. It’s good for you, it’s good for humanity.

By ‘Dele Dele-Olukoju, Marketing Communication strategist and publisher of the online Marketing Communication Digest. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria. @deleolukoju +234 807 481 2389.