Life’s great isn’t it? You’re born and just a few years after you’ve learned to pull up your pants you’re shoved into preschool. This phase will introduce you to the 1440 hours you’ll spend sitting in a chair listening to someone talk every year, for the next decade and a half. There’s running and jumping in between, some dinosaurs, and a bit about fractions, but for the most part by the time you graduate high school the most influential aspect of your education isn’t what you know, but how you’ve learned to act.

Amidst the steady stream of language, arts and arithmetic flows a subtle insistence on accomplishment, obedience and conformity. Why? Because the teacher said so. Read, recite, repeat. We’re pushed through a production line for the sole purpose of producing more product. This makes sense if you look at human community as an expanding market, or as a business. It doesn’t, if you look at the human community as people.

If you’ve made it through a rigorous degree program or two, by the time you graduate you have the qualifications of a certified worker bee. Thanks to the training you’ve received in school and the lovely cloud of debt looming behind you, you’re probably feeling the need to jump into another cycle of read, recite, repeat. Only this time for an institution that doesn’t even veil itself behind the guise of education.

Many people spend their office hours slowly dying of boredom. I don’t know about you but that’s not the way I intend to spend the majority of my life.

Now, this isn’t always the case. If you’ve got a job that gels with what you want and need – power to you. If you’re starting out, starting fresh, or redirecting, here are a few keys to a satisfying career.

Passion

When I was younger, all I wanted was an easy job. After a few, I realized that wasn’t at all what I wanted. What I wanted was a job where it was easy to give it my all. Something I felt passionate about. Something that electrified me. When you’re engaged in a process that excites you, you’re career feels more like an adventure. What’s better than that?

Purpose

Purpose is the key to being driven by a goal that resonates with your passion. Keep in mind that men of consequence – the ones people talk about twenty years after they’re gone – share their joy with the world while focusing on a task bigger than themselves. John Lennon wrote music and used it as an avenue to promote world peace. Einstein played with math equations while pushing the boundaries of science. Both did what they did because it made them happy and ended up inspiring and challenging millions in the process.

Sustainability

While I firmly believe that any career path chosen solely for money is akin to a prison sentence, a sustainable existence that you’re content with can’t be overlooked. I don’t necessarily mean having more cars than you can drive in a week. Choose to venture down whatever yellow brick road best suits your potential income with the lifestyle you would be happy living. Sometimes that convertible takes the back seat to a minivan, sometimes it doesn’t.

Re-evaluate

It’s not enough to just watch your pay rate and position title bump every once in a while. Critically re-evaluate your successes, failure, accomplishments and shortcomings. Not just in your performance at work, but in yourself. Judge yourself by the bar YOU set.

Less product, more process. Forget what you’re made to do – follow what compels you. Or in the words of my man Howard Thurman, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive!”