Redefining the Concept of a Dream Job

Holly Trantham emphasizes that a fulfilling job balances work with personal passions, fostering financial freedom without constant stress.

### Redefining the Dream Job: Key Elements for Career Fulfillment
* 👋  Holly Trantham, TFD's creative director, introduces season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life, sharing her insights on **achieving career fulfillment** while maintaining a **balanced perspective on work and life**.
* 💼 " The purpose of work is to **pay for a life that fulfills you**, emphasizing the importance of **financial freedom** where work can become **optional**.
* 📈  Strategic investing with Betterment is highlighted as a way to **ease into financial growth**, allowing individuals to **focus on their lives** while their money **works for them**.
* 🔍  The concept of a "**dream job**" is critiqued, acknowledging that even enjoyable jobs can have **tedious elements**, and suggesting that we **redefine what makes a job fulfilling**.
* 🧠  Boredom in the workplace can be constructive; Harvard Business Review research indicates that it can **foster creativity and self-reflection**, making it a sign of a **healthy work environment** if managed well.
* 💔  Emotional investment in work is crucial, but **setting boundaries is essential to prevent burnout**, especially in emotionally taxing roles like social work.
* 💰  A dream job should allow for **financial growth**, where income can **increase over time** through various avenues, not just salary, ensuring **stability amidst economic challenges**.
* 🎨  Finally, having time and energy for personal passions outside of work is vital for overall well-being, reinforcing that the ultimate goal is to **love work for the freedom it provides to pursue what truly matters**.

hello everyone. I'm Holly Trantham, TFD's creative director, and this is season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life. For the past eight years, I've been working behind the scenes on all of the content you see here on YouTube and across all of TFD's channels, and I also wrote our second book, Beyond Getting By. Throughout this series, I'll be talking about how to approach your money and career decisions from a chill place where they help you live the life you want without ever becoming your sole focus. Here at TFD, we truly believe the purpose of work is to pay for a life that fulfills you, and that means working towards the kind of financial freedom where one day work itself becomes optional. And in addition to increasing your income over time, the biggest piece of that puzzle is to invest strategically with Betterment. Putting your money to work towards that goal of financial freedom is made easy. Just answer a few simple questions about your investing goals, timeline, and other factors, and Betterment will take it from

there because with automated investing tools like portfolio rebalancing and dividend reinvestment, Betterment makes investing easy for you and a total grind for your money. Betterment can help someone ease their way into investing as their financial experts are working behind the scenes to make your money hustle while you do literally anything else. Get started, be invested, click the link in our description, or head to betterment.com/tfd to sign up in minutes. So, at first glance, the title of this video might sound antithetical to what we have been talking about here at TFD for years, and that is that work is work, and the idea of a dream job doesn't exist. I love my job, and I feel lucky every day to have a career in media, something that is notoriously tough for a lot of people to achieve. But I would be lying if I said that every aspect of my work is purely enjoyable. I may get to write a lot for my job, but I also have to sit in administrative meetings and coordinate filming.

schedules with multiple parties, a task I really don't enjoy. Even the enjoyable parts of any job can get a little old after a while, or at least they weren't as exciting as they once were. We can trace the idea of the dream job to its very American roots in Calvinism. Here's a quote from Anne Helen Peterson's book on millennial burnout: can't even when people follow a calling, money and compensation are positioned as secondary. The very idea of a calling stems from the early precepts of Protestantism and the notion that every man can and should find a job through which they can best serve God. American Calvinists interpreted dedication to one's calling and the wealth and success that followed as evidence of one's status as elect. This interpretation was conducive to capitalism, the cultural theorist Max Weber argues, as it encouraged every worker to see their labor not just as broadly meaningful but worthwhile, even sacred. And the idea of a dream job

especially in creative circles can actually lead people to stay in bad work environments. Here's a quote from a submission to the workplace advice blog Ask a Manager: I was hired over two years ago by a visual arts organization. It's been a really amazing opportunity but a huge amount of work. This job has been affecting me negatively emotionally for a while. I'm starting to get burnt out. I dread going in in the morning. I love the work in theory but it's just too much for one person to keep up long term and I know I'm not doing as good a job as I could be. I'm really underpaid, have never gotten a raise, and I'm working a second job to make ends meet. Now, this doesn't mean you should just suck it up and pick a career path at random, but I think we need to redefine what qualities make up a dream job, especially for those of us who feel a little stuck on what we want out of our careers. In no particular order and certainly not an exhaustive list, here are four elements I think

should make up any dream job. Number one, the boredom is bearable. Again, we need to let go of this idea that work should always be enjoyable or fulfilling or even challenging, and accept that it's perfectly okay to seek contentment. Because, as I said in the intro, there is literally no job out there with zero element of boredom or annoyance. But according to the Harvard Business Review, some boredom can even be a good thing. Recent research shows that boredom, when handled constructively, has big bright sides. Moments of boredom can offer a pause or a short respite for your brain and body in a world designed to distract, overwhelm, and over-simulate. A sense of boredom can create the space to daydream, which can hatch creativity, new ideas, and innovation. Prolonged boredom can prompt you to reflect and ask yourself, Am I on the right path? Am I doing the right thing? It also spells out different types of boredom, which can help you decide what to do about it, if anything. In different boredom, a positive type of boredom that can help boost rest and

Recovery, particularly during busy days, calibrating boredom more unpleasant but common. It occurs when you're not fully engaged in a task or activity, and your mind starts to drift, searching boredom in which you are searching for distractions. While unpleasant, this type of boredom ignites activity and the pursuit of change, and often has positive outcomes such as creativity, innovation, and personal growth. Reactive boredom: becoming restless from doing repetitive or tedious tasks. This is deeply unpleasant and might result in a more angry or aggressive fashion toward others or toward the boring experience. Lastly, apathetic boredom, where you are disinterested or unmotivated. It can occur as a result of chronic stress, depression, or other mental health issues, and can lead to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. So, if a job only elicits one of the more positive types of boredom, to me, that's a good sign. Number two: it allows you to be appropriately emotionally invested. Having healthy emotional boundaries in place in regards to your job is extremely important for multiple reasons.

For one thing, you may love your company, but your company will never love you back. Now, this doesn't mean not knowing your personal limits. If you can't work for a company and feel good about yourself because of their unethical business practices, that is something to listen to, and you should learn what you do and don't want to compromise on. But at the same time, if you need to stay in a job simply because you need the paycheck, especially in today's job market, that is a failure of the system, not you as an individual. Even still, a lot of us do want jobs where we feel fulfilled and care about what we're doing and where we are motivated to perform well. You just have to know where the line is with your ability to be able to leave work at work. And there are also certain jobs that are more emotionally draining than others, but this doesn't mean that you should rule that out as a career path for yourself. For instance, social workers and therapists often experience compassion fatigue that can easily lead to burnout. To prevent this

you have to be proactive, and as they say, fill your own cup first. According to Choosing Therapy, this means things like practicing physical and emotional self-care, putting strict boundaries in place between your work and your personal life, and being open with your manager about what you need. Caring about your work is a good thing because it's definitely more fulfilling to care about what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, even if that care is just, I want to feel like I'm useful here. But you don't want to care so much that it bleeds into every aspect of your life. Number three: your job allows you to widen the gap between what you earn and what you spend. Let me be very clear here: I do not think ambition for ambition's sake is a virtue. It is totally okay if you have no desire to own your own business or be a C-suite executive. However, as we have all experienced in the past year or two, inflation is very real, and the federal government is doing absolutely nothing to make sure wages keep up with it. It's

unfortunately, up to you to make sure you continue earning more, which means finding a way to make sure there's a clear path for growth. That could mean having regular check-ins with your manager to talk about your career goals, moving to a company where there are more clearly defined paths to success, or even cultivating a freelance career where you set your own rates. A dream job needs to be one where your income grows with you over time. And remember, that doesn't just have to come in the form of your salary but could also come from benefits with things like employer matching on a 401K, getting health insurance covered, and paid time off. And that doesn't even necessarily mean getting a substantial raise every year and could even mean taking a pay cut at one point in order to make a big career pivot or change industries. That could be a very strategic move towards the end goal of earning more in the long run. Lastly, number four, you have energy and time for your passions outside of work. When I interviewed e-rodsky for our second book

Beyond getting by, she was very clear that having personal passions, which she calls unicorn spaces, should not be optional. According to Harvard Health, hobbies are extremely beneficial to our well-being. A study published by Nature Medicine suggests that having a hobby is good for your health, mood, and more. Researchers combed through five large studies involving more than 93,000 people across 16 countries. Participants were all ages 65 or older, and more than 60% had long-standing mental or physical health conditions. They periodically answered questionnaires about their health and well-being and were followed for 4 to 8 years. Compared with people who didn't have hobbies, those who did reported better health, more happiness, fewer symptoms of depression, and higher life satisfaction. The findings were similar across all countries. I personally think it is perfectly valid to be more invested in your personal passions than in your day-to-day work life, and it doesn't mean you don't care about your job. If anything, having interests outside of work should make anyone more motivated to perform well at

work so that they can keep sustaining those interests. The dream should not be to love your job so much it doesn't feel like a job; it's to love your work because it gives you the freedom to do things that really matter to you. Is all this too much to ask? It's hard to say what makes for an acceptable work environment; it really varies across industries and companies. For instance, some companies are totally grasping onto the idea that remote work is the future, while whole industries have gone back into the office permanently, or so they say. Though you'll notice I didn't say that remote work is a core component of a dream job. It is for some people, but not for others. Ultimately, I think the points I listed out in this video are more important than any impressive job title or the idea that you should absolutely love everything you're doing at work 100% of the time. Because I think having this kind of balance is ultimately the bigger pipe dream. This has been season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life. Again, I'm TFD.

creative director Holly Trantham, and thank you so much for joining me.

4 Things You Should Care About Way More Than Having A "Dream Job"

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The Financial Diet

Holly Trantham, TFD's creative director, discusses approaching money and career decisions from a chill perspective in the second season of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life.

She emphasizes the importance of financial freedom and strategic investing with Betterment to make work optional.

The concept of a dream job is traced to American Calvinism, where dedication to one's calling was seen as evidence of status and success, ultimately shaping the modern work culture.

Many people stay in negative work environments due to the pressure to find a "dream job.

" Boredom at work is inevitable, but it can have positive effects, such as fostering creativity and personal growth.

A job that only elicits positive types of boredom can be a good sign, and having healthy emotional boundaries is crucial for maintaining a balanced investment in one's job.

A company's lack of loyalty to its employees can create a moral dilemma, especially when unethical practices are involved.

It's important to establish boundaries between work and personal life, particularly in emotionally draining jobs like social work and therapy.

Proactive self-care and open communication with management are key to preventing burnout and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

The Importance of Career Growth and Personal Passions

Having a clear path for growth is essential for increasing income over time, whether through regular check-ins, moving to a new company, or freelancing.

Benefits like employer matching on a 401K, health insurance, and paid time off can also contribute to financial growth.

Additionally, having personal passions outside of work, or "unicorn spaces," is crucial for well-being, as studies show that hobbies lead to better health, happiness, and life satisfaction.

Loving your work should provide the freedom to pursue what matters to you, rather than the job itself feeling effortless.

Work environments vary, with some companies embracing remote work while others return to the office.

Ultimately, achieving a balance and having a fulfilling work experience is more important than striving for a perfect job or title.