In season 2, we cover the topic of decisions at work. We interview a range of fascinating guests with different professions who discuss how they chose their careers and what decision making looks like in their world.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Decisions about work are challenging!

We spend so much time at work! Various estimates suggest 13 years (between 90000 and 115000 hours) and about 15% of our life - or if we exclude the years that we spend sleeping or trying to get to sleep (33 years), then it’s around 26% of our waking hours.

Many popular surnames - Smith for example - described an individual’s profession - which suggests that in olden days people probably didn’t change jobs that often! Our work is often a key way of describing and defining ourselves. And in many cultures, our work reflects our social status.

Work can give us a means to make a difference in the world - we can take our passions and harness them to a group or an organisation who can help us achieve those goals.

Work requires us to make a multitude of decisions - and generally our employer expects that we get those decisions right.

The key factors that shape our decisions in our personal lives may be quite different from the key factors that are supposed to shape the decisions we make at work: values, goals, workplace rules, decision-making authority and implications.

LINKS

Here's an interesting article from Huff Post that breaks down our life into years spent doing different tasks: weve-broken-down-your-entire-life-into-years-spent-doing-tasks_n_61087617e4b0999d2084fec5

Enmeshment is a term psychologists use to describe the situation in which the boundaries between people become blurred - that can sometimes happen in the workplace too and is described in this HBR article - https://hbr.org/2019/12/what-happens-when-your-career-becomes-your-whole-identity

WHAT TO DO?

Subscribe and follow - we 're pretty sure you'll find this season fascinating!

IN OUR NEXT EPISODE...

We speak with Jonno Holmes, who reveals what life as a senior paramedic looks like!

For more episodes and information about decision making head over to our website: https://goodbetterright.com.au/podcast/

Tessa Mudge and Ken Smith