Photo by Julie Brimberg
‘There are no happy jobs. There are only happy workers.’
Issue #23
Author Joanne Gordon dissects that sentiment by digging into the minds of people who love what they do in her new book
By Amy Schroeder
Published: March 1st, 2005 | 11:59am
Joanne Gordon said writing has always been a part of her, starting from a young age. “I was a writer as a child,” she said. “I wrote a little fiction book when I was 12.”
Gordon studied journalism at Indiana University but, after college, worked in marketing for six years. “Then I really started to miss writing,” she said. “I’d always had a dream of being more of a professional writer, so I went to graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism in my late 20s.”
After grad school, she moved to New York, taking a job at a trade magazine for a year, and then she worked for Forbes magazine for five years. “[Forbes] was a really great experience,” she said. “I started as a reporter and fact-checker, and by the time I left, I was a staff writer, and I’m still a contributing editor.”
The 35-year-old New Yorker said she’s glad she made the career switch from marketing to professional writing. “I love my career,” she said. “[Writing] challenges me. It’s a constant learning process, so I’m always intellectually engaged, and I feel really good about why I do it. I try to write stories or write books that help other people.”
Gordon recently published "Be Happy at Work: 100 Women Who Love Their Jobs, and Why," for which she interviewed a diverse group of women to find out how and why they love their work.
What inspired you to write Be Happy at Work: 100 Women Who Love Their Jobs?
I’d always had a desire to find work that I loved — and sort of had a fear of landing in a job that I didn’t love — so it’s always been a personal quest for me. I think there are too many people in the world whose jobs satisfy them financially but not emotionally, and I think that that’s really too bad. I don’t think that has to be the case, but I don’t think enough people know how or take the initiative to change that. A lot of people don’t feel that they should expect to be happy. They feel that happiness is a luxury, which is one of my main points in my book: Happiness is not a luxury. It’s not something reserved for people with connections or people with money or people who are married. It’s something that all of us can attain. It can take so many different forms. It’s not just about power or pay. I really tried to understand what was making these women happy. I identified really specific traits that I hoped would give some guidelines to other women who wanted to pursue happy work.
Who did you interview for the book?
All told, I interviewed about 150 women, and it was a really broad range. The women come from 25 states, they range in age from 21 to 87, they include a door person in New York, a truck driver, the CEO of Ogilvie, the Indigo Girls, Stockard Channing, marketing executives, engineers, judges. There is a chef in the South Pole, a hospital clown, there’s a magazine publisher. So I really tried to go across industries and to get women from a really broad range of backgrounds, ages, and experiences.
How did you find them?
In a couple of ways. I really tried to get women to come to me, and I had a Web site that I set up. I contacted associations, I invited companies to submit women — which not as many companies as I thought would actually did. So I decided I had to go directly to the women, so I contacted associations and I had them alert their members that I was looking for women who love their work and they could apply online. Word of mouth was really big. Sometimes people would just start hearing about it, and they’d send an e-mail to a friend or a mother and say, “You have to apply.” I also would approach people when I heard them involuntarily say that they just loved their work. I saw Lesley Stahl in a panel discussion. All told, I heard from about 400 women.
After interviewing about 150 women who all love their jobs, did you see any general themes that the women were citing as to why they loved their jobs?
There were four themes that I identified. I call them the “four Ps.” All the women who love their work came to share four things: process, purpose, people, and I’ll tell you the fourth one at the end. “Process:” They all engaged in activities that they are skilled at and are challenged by. That could be analyzing, writing, selling, teaching — any sort of a verb. “Purpose” means that they feel good about the results of their activities and the end result of what they do all day. It doesn’t mean they have to be altruistic, but they have to be in synch with their values. The reason why they work — other than making money for themselves — and the way it affects other people has to be in synch with their values. So they could be raising money for cancer or they could be raising money for wealthy people on Wall Street. They feel good about [their work.] But, if, let’s say you were working for a cigarette company and you’re really anti-smoking, that’s going to be a big problem, because you won’t feel good about what you’re selling, even if you’re really skilled at it.
The third “P” is “people.” I really feel that you have to like and at least respect the people with whom and for whom you work. That’s colleagues, clients, bosses. You don’t have to <tki>love</tki> your boss, but at the most you have to respect them and feel like they respect you, and ideally, you would have a friend at work. And then the fourth “P” is “proactive.” I really feel that all of these women took some degree of control over their working lives at some point. Some of them were very proactive. They went on a lot of informational interviews, and they really sought out jobs that they wanted. Other women just simply were not as intensely proactive, but they didn’t just wait around for someone to tap them on the shoulder and say, “We’re going to give you this job.” They took control over their own working lives.
What is your advice for people who aren’t happy with their jobs?
I always say that happiness doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t happen to you. You bring it on yourself. I really think you have to be proactive about it. You have to really look inside yourself about what motivates you. You have to know what your skills are to be able to find the processes that you would enjoy. You have to know what your values are and be able to identify a purpose, something that you feel good about or at least know what you wouldn’t feel good about. Then, from a personality standpoint, look for like-minded people wherever you go. You have to get out there and explore all these opportunities that are available — there are so many opportunities out there that you don’t even know exist. Sometimes you may have a passion, something that really interests you, but you think, “Boy, I love music, but I’m not going to be a musician.” That doesn’t mean there isn’t a job for you in the music industry, doing something that is directly related to a skill that you have. So, there are lots of niche jobs in a lot of industries that are behind-the-scenes jobs.
I really encourage people to [do] informational interviews — to take someone to lunch who interests them or who has a job that they want. Because if you don’t ask, you won’t learn and you won’t know. Collecting information is not only a way to educate yourself but lets people know that you’re out there and you’re interested.
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