[Would You Rather?] Pay Versus Happiness
Unless Happiness is the name of a hot Chinese gal in a lupsup ktv, I’ll rather have Money given as Pay.
Actually, I think whenever someone decides to take a job, leave a job or stay on in a job, the comparison that is made is between Monetary Compensation and Job Satisfaction.
When Nadnut presented the question, I think a fatal flaw was made in comparing the two situations. She said this when referring to the job that gives happiness:
A below average paying job but you’ll be able to knock off on time and you’re not stressed at all and you actually will have a social life?
A very big assumption was made. That if your job has no stress, and you can go off on time and you can have a social life, you will be Happy.
Which is nonsense. SOCIAL LIFE is the number one cause of UNHAPPINESS.
The truth is, when you decide between jobs, the decision has to be made in a relative contained context. The question thus is not whether your job allows you to do other things that bring you happiness (i.e. leave on time, go have a social life) but whether the job itself brings you happiness.
In other words, does the job itself give you Job Satisfaction.
For example, you might not get paid a lot, if anything, by going off to Africa to study what they are doing, but seeing their problems and coming up with ingenious simple solutions to make their life better might fill you with warm fuzzy feelings that even money whichpays for a Spitzer’s girl cannot buy.
When we decide, we are always doing a trade-off between Job Satisfaction and Monetary Compensation.
The lower the Job Satisfaction, the more Monetary Compensation we want. The higher the Monetary Compensation, the more we are willing to endure a lack of Job Satisfaction.
I think most of us instinctively want Job Satisfaction once we pass a certain stage of meeting our basic needs. Monetary Compensation is the, arguably, imperfect substitute for what our heart truly desires. We need it to get stuff to fill the void that is left by a lack of personal fulfillment and if we can’t get it from our job, where we spend a good part of our lives, then where else can we get it?
Of course, the question then is what’s your threshold?
How much of Job Satisfaction are you willing to give up just for Monetary Compensation?
And how much money is needed to ease the pain of the loss of each unit of satisfaction (assuming it is quantifiable) from a job that is more work and not life?
Me? I place a premium on Job Satisfaction.
Update:I asked what else can fill the void in our lives. To preempt the answer from certain individuals, the answer is God. And I actually do believe that. If God was real of course.
