Job satisfaction, and how to find it

How do you best arrange your life to get maximum job satisfaction? That’s a question that everyone will answer differently. And job satisfaction, the feeling that what you're doing makes a difference, is so important in life that it's worth a great deal of thought.

Here's a few of the situations where I've gotten the most job satisfaction:

- Starting my IT career, I was in tech support for Microsoft DOS and then Microsoft Access. I started without any computer background, but I learned a tremendous amount very quickly, and was constantly solving problems, especially with Microsoft Access, that were quite complex and required creativity and great troubleshooting skills. Overall, it was lots of fun. The part that got old was that although I was helping customers a lot, I wasn't building anything larger, and wasn't part of any longer-term project. Everything began and ended with a phone call or online interaction.

- More recently I had the opportunity to rework an internal product that was hobbling along, causing lots of support issues and costly time. I worked very closely with just a few people, rewrote the product from the ground up within about 5 months, and made a huge difference in the performance and features of the product. I got a lot of satisfaction from this, and people were very appreciative.

- I set up a site for my mother-in-law, an accomplished artist, to sell her artworks on Etsy. That was a new experience for me, involving substantial research and some graphics work. I still get a kick out of every order confirmation email from Etsy. And it's creating something where there was nothing before.

- I also set up a site for my mother (OldGermanLetters.com) to advertise her German translation services for old, handwritten letters, diaries, and journals. I hadn't done much front-end work previously, so it interesting to work on. I was very pleased when she recently got her first commissions. Again, I was creating something where there was nothing before, and learning some new skills.

Here's some situations I've been in that have given me the least job satisfaction:

- Jobs where I had no real work do to. It's hard to believe, but it's surprisingly common in IT. Especially when you do database work - good data people are so hard to find that once they find someone, they keep them around even if there's no immediate work. Sometimes, the organization is just overstaffed. In that case, you have to be careful when trying to find something useful to do. It's likely that you'll be stepping on somebody's toes, because the work that is available will be jealously guarded.

- A job where the work you're doing will never be implemented. Again, very common in IT. So many projects go nowhere. And frequently the writing is on the wall, for you to read, far before a project is officially declared dead or just fades away.

The title of this post is "Job satisfaction, and how to find it". But to be truthful, I don't know if I have any special insights on this, other than - it's damned important.

Here's a quote that I found very insightful, from the book Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

To do great work, you need to feel that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something important. 

This doesn't mean you need to find the cure for cancer. It’s just that your efforts need to feel valuable. You want your customers to say, “This makes my life better.” You want to feel that if you stopped doing what you do, people would notice. 

You should feel an urgency about this too. You don’t have forever. This is your life’s work

My first attempt at a time-lapse video

I've always been fascinated by time-lapse videos, so after watching one from my friend Jim England (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YbpQQY1pQg), taken on his iPhone, I decided to try it myself.

This is the sunset from our back deck, with the app Framelapse. Yes, it's quite flawed - next time I'll have it do a photo every few seconds instead of every second, and, of course, set it up horizontally!

Easily link to an address in Google Maps

EDIT: just in - an easier way is to click on the gear icon in the bottom left of Google Maps. That will give you a "share or embed map" option, which gives you the link.  Thanks, Roger!

I've had a hard time finding an easy way to email someone a link to a particular address, or location in the new Google Maps. I expected to be able to right-click on a location in Google Maps and have a "Copy Link Address" option pop up.  That doesn't work, though.

You can still do it, though. Here's how:

1. Go to Google Maps
2. Type your address in the search box at the top left
3. When you get the resulting Google Maps page, the URL at the top will look something like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/400+Mercer+St,+Seattle,+WA+98109/@47.6248623,-122.3486017,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x54901547316f078b:0xdfb80bac5a3df8a8

4. Copy only the left part of the URL, until the @. In this case, it's this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/400+Mercer+St,+Seattle,+WA+98109

5. Now you have an easy street address link you can use anywhere: https://www.google.com/maps/place/400+Mercer+St,+Seattle,+WA+98109

Thoughts on international development and "The White Man's Burden"

My college major at UNC-CH was Interdisciplinary Studies, with a focus on International Development. It was mainly a bunch of courses that I took because of my own interests, and International Development happened to be a good theme for them. But I did always have a special interest in International Development.

Now that I'm working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest non-profit foundation in the world, that interest has been reawakened. I've read up on the topic, and about some of the controversies that have come up recently about how effective aid to third world countries actually is.

The book The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly, a former officer of the World Bank, was one of the first to promote an alternative view of the effectiveness of aid to third world countries. His basic premise is that the intelligent, well-meaning people who work in the field of international development are fooling themselves when they think that their knowledge and experience can improve things for people on the other side of the world. His point is that it's not the knowledge of development professionals that is going to improve the lives of poor countries. It's the knowledge and insights of the people actually living there, who know what their real needs are - assuming they have basic economic and political freedom. Which they usually do not.

Also, he makes the point that their basic economic and political freedom can be threatened by aid. For instance, in some of the worst governed countries in the world (Haiti, Zaire, Angola), foreign aid has actually intensified the suffering of poor people, by propping up their incredibly corrupt and repressive governments.

It's certainly far, far more comfortable to believe that our good intentions always or even often result in good outcomes. It's just not true.

The new Kindle just doesn't work for me

I have a hard time coming up with gift ideas for myself - I'm usually pretty minimalist. So when my husband asked what I might like for Christmas, I came up blank. Then I thought - why not replace my ancient Kindle?  It has dings on the front (from when I let my son Kenny use it) that make it look like there's extra commas scattered across the page, and the right side button to go back a page doesn't work.

My old Kindle

So, I asked for a new, touch-screen Kindle. I didn't want the Kindle Fire, since I'm not looking for a new color computing device, I just want a no-distractions electronic book.

And I got one. Here's my new Kindle, the Paperwhite:

New Paperwhite Kindle

It was great to have the built-in light. But that causes the battery to deplete correspondingly quickly. Another negative - the new Kindle was thicker and heavier.

But, the thing I really couldn't take was the touch screen. I always had to be careful where I touched the new Kindle, because any touch on the front would cause a page turn or some other event. Also, on my old Kindle, turning pages was easy, with the buttons right on the side of the device. With the new Kindle, I had to actually tap the right side of the screen to turn a page. It sounds trivial, but I read very quickly, and I was constantly needing to move my thumb to turn the page, while needing to avoid touching the screen otherwise. Reading basically went from a one-handed operation with the old Kindle to a two-handed one, just like with a paper book.

So, back to Amazon the new Kindle went. And I now have a greater appreciation for my old Kindle.

My 9 best tips and principles for keeping kids toys organized

After 11 years and 2 boys, I think I have toy organization pretty well handled. Our method is cheap and straightforward, and it's usually not too cluttered around the house. Here are the tips and principles that work for us:

- Cheap wire shelving This is the framework of our storage system. We've partially re-purposed the entry coat closet into a toy storage area, with adjustable wire shelving. It's about 1/3 coats, and 2/3 toys. The wire shelving can be fairly cheap if you don't go all "California Closets", and just stick to the basics you can find at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Our hall closet

- Plastic bins, with blue painters tape for labels. If our toys were out in the open more, we'd probably use something more attractive, but since they're in a closet, this works well. Instead of something more fancy, I just use blue painters tape for labeling, writing on it with a Sharpie pen. These are very easy to remove when I need to use the bin for something else.

- They don't need that much! The animal bin above used to be twice as big, but it didn't add to the "play value", and they just don't need that many of one type of toy. So we sorted through them, and got rid of duplicates and ones they didn't play with. Now everything needs to fit in this bin. If more comes in, something needs to go out.

- Make some toys completely inaccessible. We have a lot of toys - not as much as some familes, but still, they don't all fit comfortably in this closet. So we rotate things out occasionally to the garage. We usually do this every couple months. Some things that get played with a LOT (Legos, Knex) don't get rotated out. When we bring some of the toys back inside, the kids are much more interested in them.

- Pay them to get rid of toys. A year and a half ago, we went to Switzerland for 2 years. We had to get rid of a lot before the move. So, I went through all the stuffed animals, and allowed them to each keep their 5 favorite. My kids were a lot happier giving up the rest when I gave them 25 cents for each, which I didn't mind doing because they don't get an allowance.

- Big clean-ups - about once or twice a year, we do a big clean up. This means everything goes out of the closet, and gets organized and re-evaluated before it goes back in. This is a great opportunity for a garage sale, with the kids deciding what they'd like to sell, and allowed to keep the money. I've tried to have the kids do this on their own, but so far that hasn't worked - they need lots of supervision.

- Have a "lost pieces" bin. This saves time if there's lot of items that belong somewhere else. I just drop it into the "lost pieces" bin, and it will eventually get put back when we do a big clean-up.

Our "lost pieces" bin

- Cheap milk jug bin - this is great when you run out of regular bins, and still have things to put away. It's just a one-gallon milk jug, cleaned up and with the top cut off!

- Clean up before video games - My kids, like most, love playing video games, and are allowed to do that every day for a certain amount of time. Before that happens, though, they need to do a basic cleanup around the house. Linking the cleanup to something they want to do - video games - is a great way to make sure it actually happens.

So there you have it - my best tips, gleaned from years of dealing with frustrating clutter. I hope they give you a few ideas as well!