The Happiness of Duty Well-Performed
The mother duck looked so alert and poised as she sailed out into the pond, a bevy of little ducklings following in her wake. I imagined she was content, following the path that nature laid out for her, performing all the tasks of motherhood by instinct. She was made to do exactly what she was doing.
I don’t know, of course, whether ducks feel contentment or not. But they look pretty peaceful. It’s hard to imagine them saying, “Geeze, I hate this job. I can’t go anywhere without all these ducklings following me. Can’t a girl get a break?”
Not all of us find work that feels like we were born to do it. When I drive to my office in the morning I sometimes wonder how many of the other commuters are going to jobs they dreamed someday they would do. Very few of us, I’d wager, despite all the “do what you love, the money will follow” advice out there. But we do end up in work that allows us to exercise our capabilities and, once we’re past the learning curve, to apply our strengths and talents in performing our duties well. And to the extent that we apply them, giving our work our focused attention, doing it well, we find satisfaction in what we do.
That combination—engaged attention on an activity where our skills meet its challenges—is the recipe for what psychologists call “flow.” Feeling neither bored nor anxious, you’re absorbed in the moment, performing with focused attention. You feel in control. You have a clear sense of what you’re working to accomplish. You lose track of time. There’s just the activity. And at the end of the day, you feel that you did something worthwhile.
In addition to the satisfaction that follows a stretch of being in the flow, the skilled performance of our duties yields other psychic rewards. It provides us with a sense that we contributed our piece to the larger whole. The earnings from our work help us feel self-reliant. The work itself moved the company toward its goals and served its clients or customers. We were part of society’s rhythm as we performed it, connected. We held up our part. We met the expectations of our position. And those things generate a sense of belonging, pride, and self-esteem.
So it’s Monday and most of us are sailing out into the pond, ready to paddle through another work week. And most of us grumble about it, and say we would rather be eating bon-bons at the beach, or playing golf or gardening. But the truth is there’s happiness in duties well-performed, however subtle and overlooked its appearance may be.
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