The Four Ws Of Career Satisfaction

They say that the three most important decisions in life are:

1. What you do.
2. Where you do it.
3. With whom you do it.

I think that is true. To have a great career, you must choose work that gives you satisfaction, a working environment that is pleasing, and coworkers/business partners who make it easier for you to achieve your objectives.

To those three Ws, I'd add a fourth: when - as in when you work and when you don't. Being in charge of the hours you work and the vacations you take is an important element in the mix that makes up the perfect working lifestyle.

This blog is all about business, about taking your business to the next level. But it is also a blog about personal power and satisfaction, about changing the way you work so that you can become increasingly in charge of the four Ws of career satisfaction and thus be able to say, "I have the greatest job in the world!"

Being In Control Of Your Time

My working time used to be directed by other people and measured by a time clock. When I went into business for myself, I began with the happy illusion that I could work the hours I wanted. But I soon discovered the truth about entrepreneurship: that the freedom it gives you is usually the freedom to work twice as long and twice as hard as you ever did, even if you thought you were working too much for someone else.

Nowadays, though, I don't work that hard. In fact, most days I don't do any "work work" until about two o'clock in the afternoon.

For me, "work work" is interviewing prospects for my business and helping families with their financial situations.

What I do during the rest of my day is pretty much up to me. Most mornings I spend writing and planning. I work out every day at 10 am. Sometimes I lunch with business colleagues, and sometimes I lunch with friends. Once or twice a week, I'll have hour-long brainstorming sessions with creative people - not because I need to but because I like to. I spend 15 minutes with my personal assistant every day, and that's about it.

Doing What You Like To Do

Except for about an hour a day of e-mail drudgery, my time is entirely my own and entirely enjoyable. I take off early when I want to and come in late anytime I wish. I have eliminated all the stress that used to characterize most of my workday.

The majority of my day is spent doing things I love to do:

1. Writing down my thoughts and experiences.
2. Having lunch with successful people.
3. Reading and learning.
4. Working out and playing sports.

This is, as you can see, pretty much what I always hoped my retirement years would be like, except that I'm getting paid to spend my time like this now. If you can do exactly what you want, where and when you want to do it, and get paid well for it - that's about all you can ask for.

Except for one more thing: I couldn't tell you that I have the greatest job in the world if I didn't also work only with people I want to work with.

Hanging Out With Great People

In determining where you want to work, when you want to work, and what you want to do, no consideration is more important than who you choose to work with. That's because if you fill your working life with really good people, the problems that usually hamper and plague a business at every stage of growth will be easy to solve and will eventually disappear.

Great people make all the difference.

Many times I have been told by an ordinary business partner that certain problems were impossible to overcome...only to find another partner who went ahead and fixed them so that they were never again troublesome.

That's the difference between an ordinary partner and a superstar.

Have you ever had a business that failed because your partner turned out to be unreliable, untrustworthy, or incompetent?

By surrounding myself with the right whos - lots of hardworking, problem-solving superstars - I have been able to master the whens, wheres, and whats of my business life.

I really do have the world's best job. And, by the way, I make a pretty good living at it.$