I have been thinking about some past employments I have had and why I left. I was earning good money, earned some awards and putting away quite a bit into a pension pot too. So why did I leave? Was it because I like to be self employed? Perhaps, I thought. But what did I like about being self-employed? The main thing that came up was the sense of being self managed or autonomous. I have always been motivated and did many things like research in my own time because I liked to do so.
What I did not like in my employments was a ‘line manager’ poking at my records, filing up forms stating how many hours of (self directed) research I had done and going for performance evaluations. After all, I was getting external validations such as awards and grants, so I could see any reasons for being evaluated by someone. Also, I could not achieve my best because I was continuously having to limit my creativity due to external circumstances. In short, I did not achieve mastery although I was getting awards. There were also no purpose to my work- I just had to follow some outdated and uninspiring guidelines. I could not use my creativity and resourcefulness in directing my time.
So there we have it, we need a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose in order to do our life’s work, in order to follow our heart. This cannot be induced artificially by someone, by someone’s rules or by money. This has been researched by many organisations such as Harvard, London School of Economics and others but not yet used in every day work. So now although I learn much less, I have a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose to my time and work. I found this video, which describes best what I went through, so I am sharing it here. Enjoy!
A Value Creating Life 