A Job to Love (The School of Life Library)

A good enough job has the normal, full range of defects: it’s a bit boring at some points, it has fiddly, frustrating aspects; it involves times of anxiety; you have to put up with occasionally being judged by people you don’t especially respect; it doesn’t perfectly utilise all your merits; you are never going to make a fortune; sometimes you have

The data coming into our heads is heavily biased. If we could really see what life and work were like for other people we’d probably have a very different view of our own attainments and position. If we could fly across the land and peer into everyone’s lives and minds like an all-seeing angel, we’d see how very frequent disappointment is; we’d see

We readily suppose that a lot of people have flat stomachs, though in fact this is extremely unusual: in Australia, for instance, only 2 per cent of adults have a slender physique, and by the time one is middle-aged it is simply freakish to be anything other than flabby. In the UK, about half the population feels worried about money on any particul

Our brains – the faulty walnuts that do our thinking – don’t easily understand statistics and probability. We imagine that some things are much more common than they really are. We tend to suppose that the top 1 per cent of the population live lives of incredible luxury, flitting round the globe in private jets. But in France the top 1 per cent ear

But we don’t notice ourselves doing pretty much the same thing. We too are clutching lottery tickets of various kinds and setting our sights on statistical near-miracles, even though we don’t realise we’re doing it. And a crucial place where this happens is in our hopes of happiness around work.

For a time, until we are stronger, we should be courageous enough to adopt a more generous perspective on ourselves. We may have failed, but we have not thereby forfeited every claim to sympathy and compassion. We were defeated not merely because we were cretins, but also: 1. Because the odds were against us We fell so readily and heedlessly in lov

We are often exposed primarily to the people in the public realm who have been unusually good at externalising their talents and acting on their ambitions. By necessity we hear more about these people even though they are in fact pretty rare and, hence, not a reasonable or helpful base for comparison.

In order to face our troubles in a slightly calmer state of mind, we should admit the inherent dignity and complexity of the problem of working out what to do. Rather than follow a Romantic-era faith in intuitive feeling, the process of working out what to do, or what to do next, should be recognised for what it is: one of the most tricky, complica

The ‘regret-free life’ exists only in songs. The way to diminish regret is to alleviate the sense that one had the option to choose correctly, and failed.