This post was inspired by The Four Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss. The book had a deep impact on me and really changed my thinking about many things. Chief among these, as might be expected, was work and employment. What follows are some thoughts, born of my musings on the seminal ideas in this book, that guided me towards finding satisfying work.

Towards the beginning, Ferriss proposes that money isn’t the only the currency out there. When thinking of work and pay, most people do tend to focus on money, and indeed, the term “currency” is generally reserved for monetary matters. In one sense, it’s just means the money used and accepted in a certain jurisdiction. There are, however, other currencies that we constantly use, whether consciously or not. When we take these other currencies into account, we’re better able to assess a work arrangement in terms of its suitability.

Money isn’t the only medium of exchange, and it’s possible to conceive of various other things as being traded between people and thus functioning as currencies. Some of the most important of these other currencies are time, independence, energy, and status. That is to say, an employment arrangement involves trading along each of these dimensions: work entails a certain time commitment, a certain investment of energy, and confers a certain social status. Crucially, however, money is often the only currency whose exchange is explicitly set out in the terms of the agreement. A job contract will set a definite amount of pay but pass over the other dimensions in silence. As a result, the true trade-offs are inscrutable or hidden. This isn’t necessarily anything nefarious; it just means that some reflection is required to evaluate exactly what a job truly offers and what it demands.

The first point is that jobs which command a high salary usually require onerous trade-offs in terms of time and energy. In many professional jobs nowadays the standard workweek has all but disappeared. The expectation is that the professional will work as required. This is sometimes vaguely stated in a job contract but more often than not is simply not addressed. In effect, the professional is on an unlimited retainer, a money retainer consisting of a salary. Moreover, work often comes up unpredictably, so that the professional is effectively on call.

Time is closely related to but distinct from the currency of energy. While time is sometimes still referred to in job contracts, energy never is. Admittedly, it’s an amorphous concept, but it’s still extremely important. Jobs that carry higher responsibility and difficulty drain much more energy, and as a result there’s correspondingly less energy available for personal activities. In the case of some particularly demanding jobs, whatever free time is left over outside of work has to be spent restoratively, recharging, rather than actively.

In large part, the salary offered for such positions is compensation for these sacrifices: longer working hours and the incursion on personal autonomy. Once these are factored in, the situation looks different. The salary is still high in absolute terms but can no longer be viewed as simply a function of the higher economic value of the work itself. This is not to say that this trade-off is undesirable, just that the higher salary cannot simply be seen as more money simpliciter. Similarly, many lower paid lines of work can be seen, at least to some extent, as job arrangements in which some of the compensation comes in the form of increased leisure opportunity and personal autonomy. Again, the desirability of this trade-off is a matter of personal preference.

This is related to the second point: part of the remuneration for professional services is in fact not monetary at all but rather intangible. In particular, it is paid out using the currency of prestige. Professions tend to confer the benefit of high social status, and many people seek out these careers at least partly on account of their status value. This means that the monetary compensation can be set lower than it otherwise would be; the prestige of the profession can perform some of the work in attracting talent. As a result, the monetary compensation is actually lower than it otherwise would be. This is especially the case for front-line positions that command attention and publicity. Back-office positions where people work in relative obscurity are, conversely, less prestigious and require relatively higher monetary incentives.

What is common to these cases is the role of money, as the universal medium of exchange, in modulating the exchanges of the other currencies. In other words, money is used to balance out the flows of other currencies. As mentioned above, however, this dynamic is not totally transparent. Often, the only thing that is explicitly discussed and agreed to is the salary. A further complication is that different people attribute different values to the various other currencies. The upshot is that it falls on the individual to look beyond the money to identify the true nature of the exchange, along all the relevant dimensions, and evaluate whether it’s a suitable arrangement. Engaging in this type of analysis has been a decisive benefit for me in finding work that I enjoy.