Benjamin Todd
speaker
4,140 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2023
last heard 28 May
Benjamin Todd’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
But what does that actually mean?
Some people imagine that the answer involves discovering their passion through a flash of insight, while others think that the key elements of their dream job are that it be easy and highly paid.
We've reviewed three decades of research into the causes of a satisfying life and career, drawing on over 60 studies, and we didn't find much evidence for these views.
Instead, we found six key ingredients of a dream job.
They don't include income, and they aren't as simple as following your passion.
In fact, following your passion can lead you astray.
Steve Jobs was passionate about Zen Buddhism before entering technology.
Maya Angelou worked as a calypso dancer before she became a celebrated poet and civil rights activist.
Rather, you can develop passion by doing work that you find enjoyable and meaningful.
The key is to get good at something that helps other people.
Where we go wrong
The usual way people try to work out their dream job is to imagine different jobs and think about how satisfying they seem.
Or they think about times they've felt fulfilled in the past and self-reflect about what matters most to them.
If this were a normal career guide, we'd start by getting you to write out a list of what you most want from a job, like working outdoors and working with ambitious people.
The best-selling career advice book of all time, What Colour Is Your Parachute?, recommends exactly this.
The hope is that deep down, people know what they really want.
However, research shows that although self-reflection is useful, it only goes so far.
You can probably think of times in your own life when you were excited about a holiday or party, but when it actually happened, it was just okay.
In the last few decades, research has shown that this is common.
We're not always great at predicting what will make us most happy, and we don't realize how bad we are.
Showing 841–860 of 4,140 · page 43 of 207
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