Another source of happiness at work might be social interactions with other people. Past research has evidenced the essential role of interpersonal relationships in fostering happiness and well-being (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). We found that high-quality connections with others provide happiness and energy to employees (Dutton & Ragins, 2007). Pleasant interactions with others are also related to pleasant emotions (Basch & Fisher, 2000). Thompson and Heron (2005) revealed that the perceived quality of the relationship between knowledge workers and their manager can make a positive difference in the context of any breach of the psychological contract and this, in turn, can help maintain levels of commitment, which are important for knowledge creation. Hayes et al. (2010) found that collaboration among nurses and their managers was crucial to increase job satisfaction. Human being needs contact with others, but it seems that social interactions are particularly relevant for knowledge-intensive workers. This type of employees needs to share knowledge and exchange ideas to develop their knowledge. It would also seem logical that employees who feel socially detached at work might present feelings of dissatisfaction. By getting to know colleagues, workers can better understand each other and, as a consequence, work tasks become more effective in a more satisfying environment. People do not leave their job because of the company, but as a consequence of the social relationships at work.

Maslach and Leiter (1997) highlighted the effects of autonomy on employee burnout. The job-strain model (Karasek, 1979) clearly explains how autonomy is necessary for jobs involving high demands, such as the knowledge-intensive workers context. This model states that a context with high demands and low control causes strain. On the contrary, jobs with high control generate low job-strain levels. Again following Warr's Vitamin model, Horn et al. (2004) showed that autonomy, understood as the degree to which people can resist environmental demands and follow their own opinions and actions, significantly affects well-being at work. Following the job demands-resources model, it was found that job resources promoted engagement among Dutch teachers (Bakker & Bal, 2010), job demands lead to burnout among physicians (Hakanen, Schaufeli, & Ahola, 2008), job resources improved engagement and helped to cope with job demands among Finnish teachers, (Bakker et al., 2008; Georgellis and Lange, 2007), and organizational support and justice predicted affective commitment among nurses (Sharma & Dhar, 2016). Implicitly, under the JD-R theory, the perceived organizational climate has also been related to satisfaction and commitment (Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & DeShon, 2003). These contexts that make individuals perceive the employment of their unique personal strengths generate positive attitudes (Seligman, 2005). Flexible working might also promote employee happiness. Golden and Veiga (2005) revealed that telecommuters, employees who can work outside their job location, adjust work activities to meet their own needs and balance work and family responsibilities. Employees who can control their work time experience higher levels of well-being at work (Berg, Applebaum, Bailey, & Kalleberg, 2004). This control over work is considered as a primary feature to promote happiness at work (Warr, 2007). In a case study, Atkinson and Hall (2011) revealed how flexible working positively affects employee happiness. As a result, worker flexibility has been proved to decrease stress levels and increase work well-being (Golden & Veiga, 2005).

Uncertainty… About what? And Why?

As we progress into adulthood, our authentic self gets beaten down and discarded in favor our “useful” self – the self that makes us seen as productive contributors to society and the workforce.

100% of your income from a single source is still the standard for most of us. Yet for some reason reducing that percentage is seen as the risky option. Starting a business, becoming a freelancer, taking on a few consulting projects, part-time teaching – while all increasingly popular, those who haven’t done it are terrified of it. The thought that working for yourself (the one person who is truly vested in your success) would be less risky than working for a company that could toss you to the curb for factors out of your control, remains puzzling to those who have already made the leap to the other side.

Choose your passion. You know you’ve discovered your passion when you love what you are doing. But wait a minute. Nothing is that simple is it?Check out what Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, tells us:" One of the huge mistake people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don't choose your passions. Your passion chooses you".

The best part is, he doesn’t waste energy being someone he’s not.

In 365 days everything has changed. My lifestyle changed, my goals changed, and my purpose changed. More than anything else though, I changed.

career is a noun describing a post-rationalised sequence of roles consisting of activities, events, and responsibilities that you negotiated according to a set of principles and practices that led you to your current position. In the context of your motoring, career is a verb entailing a barely controlled swerving from side to side, only maintaining a loose sense of intended direction. Imagine the straight, maybe upwardly angling line represented by the former. Imagine the undulating, perhaps violently, perhaps gently, oscillating line represented by the latter.

All of these sound like cost center roles. Have you thought of going revenue driving?

Your attitude should be that you are interested and excited as hell to learn how to code. Even if it just means you have an app no one uses. But instead, I get the sense that it is something you already view like a chore, like how I view removing my pop corn ceiling or remodeling my kitchen. That is not a good start. Do a few free online courses, there are a million. You should find it very fun and have you thirsty to work on some real world projects. If that isn't your attitude, you will be beat by fresh CS grads who will work for way cheaper than you and just spend 4 years learning to code, or guys like me who love this stuff to the point where we stay up late working on a development project for fun.

Make Room For Fear, But Don’t Let It Control YouFear is almost always the driving force behind our resistance to leap into a new project or undertaking. We’re afraid it might flop, that we’re not up to the task, that we might learn something dark and ugly about ourselves in the process, that we might be wasting our time, or people will hate it. The laundry list of fears that stand in our way goes on.

Early on in my life, for example, I found computer coding / software writing quite interesting, but it proved to be too lonely and isolating for me. Haven’t touched the stuff in decades/.Other jobs and hobbies that proved more interesting and satisfying, I’ve stuck with. On the career front, my passion turned out to be for something I started doing as a substitute, on a whim, and never trained for: teaching.

Over time, you’ll gravitate to several main passions. Don’t be in a rush, thinking you have to choose NOW. You can re-invent yourself many times over if you so wish. Or, if you find your true passion(s) now, you can stick with it (them).

The most common mistake people make when choosing a happy and fulfilling career is that they wait to be hit in the face with passion.Seeing this in movies and TV shows we have gotten to believe that passion is something so definite and easy to find that it just hits you square in the face when you see it. That is how passion in both love and your work works… right?Wrong. The truth is that it is you who develops this passion over the course of time.

urst,  Kungu  and  Flott,  2012;;  McCleese et al.,2007

Previous research also implies that career plateau was predominately studied from an organisational perspective (structural plateau and job content plateau) and little empirical research has been reported on an individual’s   perception   (professional   plateau).  

 “patchwork”  of  jobs  (Nachbagauer  and  Riedl,  2002),

Job content plateauoccurs  when  talented  employees   reached  a  “brick  wall”  within  their  career  that  delivers no further career progression and leads to feelings of anxiety, job dissatisfaction, loss of motivation, lack of challenges and tension (Carlson and Rotondo, 2001).