Dear Colleagues
An engineering job can suck up all your time and energy and when combined with your daily home and personal life it is often hard to pause and reflect on whether you are happy or not. Many of you will remark that fighting life’s daily battles requires more than enough effort without worrying about issues such as happiness.
However, an interesting measurement of happiness is the rule of thirds for happiness.
This is based around the following principle.
Ask yourself Three Questions
- Are you happy in your job?
- Are you happy where you live?
- Are you happy who you’re with? (in these more interesting times – this could vary from partner, spouse or friends)
If you’ve got at least two out of three; you’re found happiness. If not; you need to make changes to one (or possibly two of these elements).
Naturally, this is a simplistic view (and I hope many of you will disagree with me and provide your own measurements of happiness!); but it is useful to stop and think about. My wife contends that happiness is a far more complex business than these simple measures.
We Are Often So Caught up
Once completing our education (ranging from a trade to a degree) we are often so caught up in our new career that we don’t consider these three items. It is vital to pause and ‘smell the roses’ and consider these points occasionally. After all, we all strive for some form of happiness.
Thanks very much Jeffrey Selingooft The Chronicle of Higher Education for an interesting take on happiness.
I had a muffled chuckle at the comment from the famous philosopher, Bertrand Russell:
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
(as I quite enjoy what I do at work although hopefully I am not too obsessed with it)
Yours in engineering learning
Steve