For the past two years, writing for a biosciences company in Waltham was my "real" job, the corporate post that gave me the necessary benefits and financial stability so that I could spend my free time writing essays and articles. But my yearly performance review at work didn't go so well this year.

It wasn't that I hadn't reached last year's goals or fulfilled my assignments. The problem was with the "career objectives" section, which requires the employee to lay out the next steps in his or her desired career path. I couldn't seem to fill it in.

"But what do you want to do with your life?" my manager implored, sounding more like the parent of a wayward 16-year-old than an executive overseeing a professional department.

"I want to do this," I responded, increasingly frustrated as we scheduled meeting after meeting to try to resolve the problem. "I like every project I've worked on in the past year. I've established good methods for getting my work done, and I've put new practices into place that are helping our department. I want to do just what I'm doing."

That's not good enough, my manager said, though not in so many words. You have to have goals, dreams, aspirations. Appreciating what you have is not a valued attribute in the workplace.

It's that last point that rankles, because appreciating what I've been given is one of the fundamental principles on which I operate. Mindful living may not rank high with my company, but to me it's a core value. We all spend so much of our lives yearning. I've wished for a different physique, shinier hair, a cleaner house, a better vocabulary, more obedient children, more time to read. It may sound New Agey, but at my current station in life - middle-aged, with a very nice if not decadent lifestyle, healthy children, great friends, attentive spouse - I've come to believe in the fundamental value of feeling satisfied.

Not so in the corporate sector, as I learned during my annual review. Contentment equals complacency. Companies need growth, not stasis. To be happy with what you have is to stop reaching for more.

I suspect there's a complicated but specific formula that represents the ideal worker. To be too happy, as I was in my job, is a negative thing because it means you are no longer striving to improve the company's situation. On the other hand, an employee who becomes too discontent is likely to leave, or simply sink to a level of despair or indifference that can't possibly be improving the bottom line. The fine balance is an employee who loves the workplace but is just dissatisfied enough with the job to be always looking for ways to improve it.

So even though I could rationalize it on a philosophical level, I still couldn't repair my self-evaluation. When I tried to picture where I wanted to be in the 0-2 year range, I imagined myself perfectly content with the same job, at the same desk, going through a task list very similar to the one I'd just gone through. Of course, that's not to say there isn't room for change or improvement. I'm a writer; I'm always looking for a more engaging story than the last, a more cogent way of explaining a policy, a more illuminating description of a customer's needs.

But my imagination couldn't conjure up a whole different role for myself. I didn't want a big promotion or a corner office; that would just mean more hours at work and less time for my many interests outside of work. And yet in telling the truth about that, I was putting myself at risk of being terminated: for liking the job too much.

I surely could have scripted something that would have sounded appropriate, a career progression that would have set out a path of stepping stones to lead me ambitiously up the company ladder. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Contentment may not be one of the company's core values, but integrity is. I couldn't lie for the sake of filling in the square at the bottom of the evaluation form.

The point, I now understand, is to aspire. Mindful living is a wonderful attribute in the real world, but in the workplace, discontent is the fuel that powers change, and change is the route to greater market share. I had revealed myself to be a happy person, full of appreciation for the blessings that life has handed me thus far.

And that, in the corporate environment, just won't do.

Published: Boston Globe, June 22, 2008

[ back to top ]

Book Excerpt

Between August 15th of 2007 and August 15th of 2008, the members of my immediate family turned 41 (me), 40 (Rick), 9 (Tim) and 6 (Holly), respectively.

The war in Iraq reached its fifth anniversary and accrued a total of 4,000 casualties. Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated. The Boston Red Sox won their second 21st-century World Series championship. In an unprecedented presidential campaign season that focused on issues ranging from health care to illegal immigration to how to fix the mortgage crisis, a female senator and an African-American senator made history.

And my son Tim and I ran at least one mile every single one of those 366 days. (It was a Leap Year.)

Here’s how. And why.

Excerpt from Nancy's book about her son, their running streak, and how it changed them.

Listen to Nancy and Tim's recent interview on NPR's
"The Story", hosted by
Dick Gordon.