Strategy: 3 Lies We Tell Ourselves When We Say ‘Yes’ To Work We Hate…Research also Shows that Earning $75 000/year is the Threshold Above Which your Day-to-Day Happiness No Longer Increases with More Money

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Last week, I had an interesting conversation with the owner of a growing marketing firm. The talk turned to problem clients and the owner expressed a hope that one day he’d get to a point where his business would be stable enough that he could turn down work that seemed like it was going to be more trouble than it was worth. He just didn’t feel like he had the luxury of making that choice yet. He was in a place many entrepreneurs, freelancers and job seekers find ourselves in at some point in our careers — saying yes because we feel we can’t say no.

Clock Man

If you’ve ever been in that bind, you likely tried to rationalize your doomed decision with one of the following lies:

1- “I might not get another chance.”

While it’s true that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, if the bird you have in your hands is a turkey, it’s better to take a pass. Saying yes to ill-fitting opportunities because you feel like something better might not come along is a decision born of insecurity and superstition, as if by passing on something that isn’t a good fit you’re thumbing your nose at the universe and daring it to punish your hubris by denying you future opportunities. When you stop to think about that assumption for a minute, it begins to sounds kind of absurd.

Instead, try flipping this thinking around. It’s selfish to accept an opportunity that you’re ambivalent about  because you’re taking that possibility away from someone who’d be a much better and more enthusiastic fit. A colleague of mine uses similar logic when hiring. He wants his team members to be focused on work they absolutely love doing because he feels that’s the best way to encourage productivity and keep morale high. If there’s something they aren’t crazy about (copywriting, event planning, analytics), he’d rather hire another person who does love that kind of work to take on those tasks than have his direct reports splitting their focus between projects they love and work they only do because they have to.

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2- “This will open the door to other opportunities.”

This argument is the slightly more upscale cousin of the one struggling young writers are served up by those who want to them to create content for “exposure” only and it’s just as flawed. How likely is the client from hell to recommend you for other assignments? How motivated will you be to put in the kind of effort you can leverage into bigger and better things if your workplace is a toxic nightmare? And while it’s possible that taking on work you dislike will lead to other opportunities, it’s more than likely they will be similar to what you already hate. Congratulations, you’ve built yourself a pipeline of leads that are exactly what you were trying to escape from in the first place.

3- “It’s good money.”

There’s a distinct difference between taking on unpleasant work out offinancial necessity and letting dollar signs be the deciding factor on which opportunities you elect to pursue. Think of students who choose a major based on earning potential or convince themselves that the path to a secure future runs straight through an MBA program or law school (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). For all the flak they catch, Millennials are on to something here when it comes to the idea you can buy your way to happiness (or out of unhappiness) with a fat paycheck.

A 2014 Intelligence Group survey found that almost two-thirds of Millennials would prefer to make $40 000/year at a job they loved than earn $100 000/year at one that bored them. Research also shows that earning $75 000/year is the threshold above which your day-to-day happiness no longer increases with more money.

When you find your will to resist a less-than-stellar gig being swayed by the promised payday, ask yourself what you’ll have to trade to cash in. A lucrative contract seems less appealing when it means putting in 65-hour weeks, being at a client’s (or boss’s) beck and call 24/7 and seeing your quality of life decline even as you’re doing the work you convinced yourself would allow you to improve it. Funny how that plays out.

 

Forbes.com | March 23, 2015 | 

J. Maureen HendersonJ. Maureen Henderson Contributor