Learning Challenge: The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love

Since graduation is a few weeks away, and since that makes this a good time to think about what kind of career I want to work towards pursuing, this article caught my eye from the "Learning by H.E.A.R.T." archives: "The Incalculable Value of Finding a Job You Love."

Basically, the author of the article, professor of economics Robert H. Frank, argues that while financial gain does factor into future happiness, that doesn't mean the smartest decision is to go for the soul-sucking, highest-paying job. Instead, he makes the case that the most financially successful people are often the ones who are experts in their field, spending thousands of hours to gain skills and rise above the competition.

For that reason, Frank advises his students to find the jobs most closely related to any activity that has ever wholly engrossed them. That way, they'll enjoy what they do enough to log in the thousands of hours required to be an expert, and whether or not they end up being wildly successful at it, they'll at least be happy.

He elaborates on all of this with the following:

The happiness literature has identified one of the most deeply satisfying human psychological states to be one called “flow.” It occurs when you are so immersed in an activity that you lose track of the passage of time. If you can land a job that enables you to experience substantial periods of flow, you will be among the most fortunate people on the planet.

And while the whole "future career" discussion might require a little more contemplation than that, it's definitely worth keeping in mind during that contemplation.


Image Credit: Whiteboard, by jraffin. Source: Pixabay.

Learning Challenge: Post Secret

I'd never heard of Post Secret before, but I thought the idea of empathy challenges were interesting, so I figured I'd look into them.

Post Secret itself is a site that posts confessions from people—from big, heavy secrets like bad relationships or self-harm, to funny, everyday stuff, like sending anonymous mixtape CDs to the campus mailman. Really, the site itself is interesting enough from a human perspective, because it's a reminder about how different every person's life and struggles really are, and how we've all got stuff going on that we can't or won't share with anyone else. But it's also really valuable from a storytelling perspective: each post comes tangled in its own complicated web of story and character, and a lot of them are complex enough to inspire really multidimensional stories.

This is kind of a random side note, but I also find it really interesting that Post Secret goes on tours, with shows at different spots in different countries. Kind of like Welcome to Night Vale, I imagine, though I'm curious about how this differs, since there's not really as much of a performance component. Definitely something worth looking into.


Image Credit: Throwing Stones, by Pexels. Source: Pixabay.

Learning Challenge: Sleep Deprivation is Not a Badge of Honor

The funny thing is, I set out to find a Learning Challenge prompt this week, but it almost feels like I found a Growth Mindset one instead.

In general, I'm a pretty big supporter of sleep. If I don't get a certain number of hours, my health usually takes a nosedive, and also, sleep is just too nice to miss out on in general. The chance to reset and wake up feeling sharper and more equipped to handle everything is kind of great.

But over the past couple years, I've heard a lot of people around me talk about how they've sacrificed a ton of sleep each night and ended up accomplishing all sorts of other things because of it, and I started to feel like maybe I should start sucking it up and trying that too. After all, this semester's been insanely busy for me, and I wouldn't have as much trouble juggling everything if there were more hours in the day.

That's why I'm glad I stumbled across "Sleep Deprivation is Not a Badge of Honor," by DDH. In his opening lines, the author equates sacrificing sleep to borrowing from a loan shark: a short-term fix that only creates more problems for you in the long run, when the debt stacks up and you make it harder and harder for yourself to repay. Sure, it means I might not always be able to find extra hours for non-homework reading and writing, but it also hopefully keeps me from making long-lasting mistakes, which is always appreciated. I'll be sure to keep this one in mind moving forward.


Image Credit: Alarm Clock, by Niki_filipova. Source: Pixabay.

Learning Challenge: The Value of 10 Minutes

This week, to get my Project and weekly story schedules back in sync, I'm picking up some extra credit instead of adding a new story to my portfolio. I'd never tried the "Learning by H.E.A.R.T." option before, so I thought I'd give the time-managing strategies there a shot.

I ended up reading "The Value of 10 Minutes" by Gregory Semenza, and I’m glad I stumbled across this article, because I definitely related to some of the things Semenza talked about. It’s my last semester before I graduate, and even though I didn’t think my class schedule would be too bad, I’ve been pretty much buried in homework since January. Because I’m a PW major (and because of this class, I guess), a lot of that homework is writing—which would be nice, except that I’m also trying to complete a novel outside of class and seek representation for it, and class projects are stealing a lot of time from that personal project.

At the end of February, I set a rule that I write something on that novel every day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences. That’s helped me chip away at it quite a bit—and sometimes, even if it’s late and all I want is to go to bed, just the act of getting a few sentences down pushes the snowball down the hill, and it’s easy to write quite a bit more than I expected. So I do like that the system is helping me get down more than I would otherwise, even if it’s a little lacking in the “consistency” department. That said, I loved Semenza’s approach of getting up early and trying to get two pages written first thing in the morning. I’m sometimes a slow writer, especially when I’m first getting into a scene, so I definitely wouldn’t have time to commit to two pages every morning—but I like the idea of starting the day out by getting some words under my belt, before everything else gets in the way. I’ve also recently read that author James Scott Bell does the same thing—he calls it the “nifty 350”—before the day starts up and his willpower is given away to other things on his to-do list.

Also, I’ve totally been guilty to dismiss extra ten-minute chunks of time between classes as inadequate to get anything substantial done, and “surrendering” to “distractions” like email or Twitter, like Semenza admits to. This semester, when I’ll take any spare time I can get, it hasn’t been as much of an issue—but I love the 3 points Semenza makes in his case for writing every day:

It makes writing less daunting, demystifying the process.

It makes you want to write more—a snack-sized appetizer, sort of, instead of a full meal that leaves you too full to even think about more food.

And finally, it keeps you in the flow of things: not only on “the specific sentence or paragraph you’ll be starting in on the next time you write,” but also on brainstorming new ideas or problem-solving current stumbling blocks as you run errands or go about your day.

Image Credit: Watch & Work by Unsplash. Source: Pixabay.