Product and process
What do we get in exchange for our work? There’s pay, of course, and the satisfaction of a job well done. There’s stress and human interaction, learning and physical exertion. We get the drama of what might happen next and the delight of actually pulling it off. And mostly we get the day to day.
I haven’t seen any data that says that working in accounting for a candy company is more fun or more satisfying than working in accounting for an insurance company.
And even circus clowns get bored at work.
It’s easy to be excited about what the company seems to do… to choose our path based on the public’s perception of the output. But once the company has more than one person in it, most of our day is about satisfying the customer, meeting supplier requirements and dancing with the tension of doing our jobs.
Often, we use the product we make as a reason to tolerate the process we don’t enjoy.
Perhaps it makes sense to outline the sort of process you’d like to fill your days with instead of being drawn to the product that caught your eye in the first place.