It’s important to define your wants and needs when taking steps toward a new career adventure, whether you’re looking for a new job or starting your own business. When you’re clear about what you want and need, you can more clearly articulate what you want and need to others, and with that clarity, you can also spot the right fit more easily for yourself.
A good starting place for such self-reflection is the four main needs that we humans all seem to have in common. After decades of working with people in career transition, I’ve observed that most career dissatisfaction stems from one or more of these needs not being met.
4 Main Needs
Physical – We usually choose work to take care of our physical needs such as food and shelter. Sometimes I like to call this the Fiscal Need because it’s mostly about the money (and security), but it can be about physical environment or geographical location, too.
Mental/Intellectual – We might prefer to choose work that intellectually stimulates us. This need might include a desire or need for more education – the desire to learn and grow mentally. Many people prefer mind-challenging work over mind-numbing work.
Social – We frequently choose work based on our need for social structure and want to satisfy our emotional needs through relationships at work. As primates, humans instinctively form attachments to others and seek out group interaction. Most of my clients put a high value on who they work for, who they work with as teammates, and who they would choose for ideal customers or strategic partners.
Make a Difference – We are happiest when we choose work that allows us to feel like we’re making a difference, when we’re using our inborn talents to influence change or make a positive impact. Maybe it’s making a really big difference to the local community or even to the world. But it can also simply be making a difference by helping to achieve the goals of the organization and receiving the feedback that you are.
Needs Compass
I like to think of these needs as the four points on a compass.
The urgency of each need will vary from person to person, and the variance will usually depend on factors like current and pending life events, as well as personality. As a result, your orientation to each need will dictate the decisions you make and the direction you take.
For example, maybe your orientation is heavily pointed toward northwest or maybe it’s toward southeast. It could be that your need for intellectually stimulating daily activities might be stronger than your social need. Maybe your social need is so important to you that it can also be tied to your need to make a difference, and you realize both needs by being in service to others.
Career Dissatisfaction
There’s a question worth considering in all of this… Is it okay when not all these needs are being met by your career?
So many of us have been told that the work we’re doing must make us happy (and, consequently, fulfill all four needs). Otherwise, something is wrong. The truth is that we each have more than a career to consider. We each have other areas in life where it may be possible to fulfill these needs.
For example, if your career dissatisfaction stems from wanting to make a difference but your job doesn’t allow you to do it in the way you’d like, maybe you could consider another way to make a difference. Perhaps, you might find fulfilment through community service? Fortunately, besides providing a sense of purpose, volunteering also has other benefits, including stress relief and helping to protect against depression.
If you want more intellectual stimulation than your job provides, can you develop professional or personal skills on your own, such as taking a class or trying your hand at a new hobby? You can learn just about anything online these days. You can even use ChatGPT as a learning tool to help you build your own learning program.
If you want more money but enjoy your job, maybe the solution is to shift from a paycheck mindset to an income mindset and consider ways to pull in multiple streams of income.
The most common dissatisfaction around the social need is remote working. When craving the company of other people is the issue, you can proactively find or build a tribe. You can socially and/or professionally network with other people by joining or starting a club or meetup. Volunteering can help in this area too.
So, if any of these needs are not being met by your career, consider taking a whole-life perspective before you make a career decision. There might just be a simple thing you can do to satisfy what you need.