How to Find Fulfilling Work: The School of Life

‘I thought that there was no way I would or could quit only a short time after qualifying – I’d worked so hard to get there. I would be letting myself down.’ This kind of thinking resembles what economists describe as a decision based on ‘sunk costs’: if you buy an expensive pair of shoes that turn out to be incredibly uncomfortable, you won’t want

Leonardo da Vinci called a discepolo di esperienza, a disciple of experience.

haranguing

our working identity is not a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered at the very core of our being – rather, it is made up of many possibilities . . . we are many selves.53

the ancient Greek ideal of eudaimonia or ‘the good life’.

position at Harvard that would have allowed him to write poetry for a living, but he turned it down to stay in his insurance job.

Picasso’s philosophy: ‘art is the elimination of the unnecessary’.

A helpful way to think about this is that we are caught between two forms of regret. On the one hand, the regret of abandoning a career into which we’ve put years of time, energy and emotion. And on the other, the possibility of looking back on our lives in old age and regretting that we didn’t leave a job that was not offering us fulfilment. So wh

We get so worried about regretting making a bad choice that we may end up making no decision at all, and remain frozen in our current unfulfilling career.