Shelley Smith Mydans is an outstanding example of how career success and longevity go together. Shelley, the Life magazine reporter we met at the beginning of the book, was captured by the Japanese in Manila while covering World War II. Her career in journalism was always challenging but very successful. Assigned first to Europe in 1939 and then to cover the Sino-Japanese War and then to Manila, she spent two years in captivity until her release in a prisoner exchange. One of Shelley’s duties while in prison camp was to pick the weevils out of the cereal.72
She later returned to overseas correspondence, working in radio news and reporting for Time. In her spare time, she wrote (and published) novels. Shelley Smith Mydans had a very challenging but highly successful career, as well as a successful marriage and children. It is said that she faced more stressful adventures than a soldier of fortune. Yet she lived a long, healthy life, dying in 2002 at age eighty-six.
SELF-ASSESSMENT: JOB PASSION AND ACCOMPLISHMENT
For each of the statements in the left-hand column, circle the description on the right that most accurately reflects your feeling.
1. When I work, my productivity is high.
1 – This is occasionally true of me
2 – This is sometimes true of me
3 – This is often true of me
4 – This is almost always true of me
2. I feel that my work is meaningful.
1 – Almost always
2 – Often
3 – Sometimes
4 – Occasionally
3. An important goal of my life is to reach the point where I can stop working and relax for a change.
1 – It is a minor goal
2 – It is a moderately important goal
3 – It is a very important goal
4 – It is the most important goal
4. My career success depends on my efforts, not on luck.
1 – I feel this way once in a while
2 – I feel this way about half the time
3 – I often feel this way
4 – I almost always feel this way
5. There is a lot I still want to accomplish in my career.
1 – Absolutely; I still have many career-related goals
2 – There are some things I still want to do
3 – There are only a few things I still want to do
4 – I’ve accomplished enough in my career and now I can relax
6. In the past decade, I have received special honors or awards. 1 – Yes, I often receive such recognition
2 – Yes, my efforts and contributions are sometimes specially recognized
3 – No, I am usually not that willing or able to be singled out for achievement
4 – No, I am never singled out for special accomplishments
7. In whatever I do, I aspire to excellence much more than do my colleagues. 1 – Not really
2 – Sometimes
3 – Most of the time
4 – Definitely
8. Promotions are at the whim of my boss and not really under my control. 1 – Definitely true
2 – Probably true
3 – Maybe true
4 – Not at all true
9. I am passionate about the job that I do. 1 – Not really
2 – Partly
3 – Mostly
4 – Without a doubt
To score this scale, first reverse the numerical value for statements 2, 3, 5, and 6. So, on number 2, if you said “almost always,” a 1, change it to a 4. Similarly, for these four questions change 2s to 3s, change 3s to 2s, and change 4s to 1s. Once you have done that, simply sum the values. Your score should fall somewhere between 9 and 36, with higher numbers reflecting a greater sense of passion, accomplishment, and control in one’s occupation. About 25 percent of people are expected to score above 25, while the lowest 25 percent will score around 16 and below. High scorers, despite sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the demands of their job, sense the rewards of their work and may see additional payoff in terms of longer lives.
Mismatching
We regularly chat with college students and young professionals who are searching for their ideal career paths. They are looking for a “match” between their own characteristics and the demands of their eventual careers, believing that if they fail to choose the right occupation they will be unhappy and unhealthy.
We have developed a concept that applies to this situation—the notion of a “self-healing personality.” This is the idea that a good match between an individual’s personality and the demands of one’s environment is a path to mental and physical health. For example, there is no sense in forcing an athletic student who loves roughhousing, an intelligent student who loves reading books, and an extroverted student who loves leadership all to pursue the same after-school activities. It would be better for them to choose according to their abilities and interests. We predicted that Terman men whose personalities fit well with their jobs would live longer. It made great intuitive sense to us, but was it true? It turned out to be more complicated.
Over the course of a career, the average worker spends tens of thousands of hours dedicated to his or her occupation. Psychologist John Holland created one of the most well-tested and widely used systems for simultaneously categorizing individuals according to both personality type and occupational environment.73 Holland believed that the choice of a vocation is often an expression of personality and so developed a framework that was ideal for seeing what happens when people work (or do not work) in fields that fit them.
Holland defined six types that refer both to individuals and to occupations. Artistic people and artistic occupations include actors, musicians, designers, and artists. Realistic occupations are those where people “do” things—engineers, firefighters, pilots, machinists, veterinarians, and so on. Investigative occupations involve a lot of thinking—economists, professors, and chemists. Social occupations include helpers such as clergy, nurses, teachers, and counselors. Enterprising careers generally involve persuasion such as insurance, politics, and general sales. Conventional occupations emphasize organizational skills, such as administration, financial analysis, and auditing. There is some overlap among these categories but they do a good job of capturing the general emphases of occupational skills, tasks, and interests.
Applying Holland’s categories to the Terman archives, our team (initially motivated by then-graduate student Kathleen Clark) gathered and coded information from 1940 about each person’s likes, dislikes, occupational interest scores, and preferences for various pursuits. We analyzed about four hundred activities, looking for whether the Terman men worked in occupations that matched their own personality characteristics or whether they had, for various reasons, not worked in their compatible fields.
We predicted that those individuals who spent their lives working in occupations that were a good fit for their interests would face less stress and so would be healthier and live longer. We expected that individuals who loved and valued artistic activities would be healthiest if they worked in an artistic field and least healthy if they became, say, financial analysts.
In fact, however, being well suited to one’s job did not always predict a longer life. A match could actually be a health risk factor. Among men in the Enterprising group, those with high congruence between personality and occupation died sooner—assertive, persuasive men who worked in occupations such as sales management were at greater risk than assertive, persuasive men working in other types of occupations. The personality predisposition and the career reinforced each other, bringing out the stresses and unhealthy habits common to each.
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To read more about Dr. Holland’s system of classification, see J. L. Holland,