Jason Pfeiffer (3:32)

This is Help Wanted, the show that tackles all the big work questions you cannot ask anyone else. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor in chief of.

Nicole Lapin (3:40)

Entrepreneur magazine and I'm New York Times bestselling author and money expert Nicole Lapin.

Jason Pfeiffer (3:45)

The helpline is open. Feeling unfulfilled at work sucks because you don't even know where the problem is or how to fix it. Suddenly you start thinking maybe I've just have to throw everything away. Maybe my whole life has to change. And that is probably what drove this seven minute long voice memo that we got from a listener who is in this exact spot. You can hear it for yourself. We will not play all seven minutes for you, but here is just a sampling.

Melissa (4:16)

Hi.

Caller (4:17)

I'm feeling kind of underemployed and stuck in my work situation and I wanted some advice. I did wilderness therapy with teens for a show. I worked with a mobile mechanic. My main goal is to start my own farm and to do that I am dipping my toe in, I guess, to a side hustle where I'm selling candy out of ingredients I forage. So it's like mountain mint marshmallows. And is it more Important to be happy with what I'm doing or should I just take a job paying higher wages and like. But I, I could also be mowing lawns in the city, which would be farther. I could ask for a raise. That's a possibility. I'm a smart, skilled, really hard working person who, you know, I don't want to make it sound like I'm so put out, but. But I just am grateful for what I have. But I just want more and I want to find a path.

Jason Pfeiffer (5:13)

You can hear it there, right? It's the panic, it's the analysis, paralysis. It is the I need to do something. So maybe I just do everything. So I invited her on the show to help her choose a path forward. Here's how it went. Melissa, welcome to Help wanted.

Melissa (5:32)

Hi. Thank you.

Jason Pfeiffer (5:34)

So you sent in a lot of thoughts in a lot of different directions and we will unpack them in a bit. But I feel like it would be helpful to have some context on you. But even before that, I want to ask you something now and then I'm going to ask it to you at the end of this conversation and we're going to see if the answer changes. So ready? It's this. In your voice memo you said a lot of things that you want. But if I forced you to answer the question what do you want in a single sentence, what is the answer?

Melissa (6:10)

I guess I just want my work life to be as fulfilling as the rest of my life.

Jason Pfeiffer (6:15)

That's a great answer. I love that. What are you doing right now?

Melissa (6:20)

Right now I'm working at a farm and nature center and it's owned by a university and a state extension system and that's about 30 hours per week. And I'm working as a coordinator for a nonprofit part time too, and it's like a farming related nonprofit.

Jason Pfeiffer (6:41)

The way that you answered the question a moment ago was that you wanted work to be as fulfilling as the other parts of your life. So tell me about those more fulfilling other parts of your life.

Melissa (6:51)

Oh yeah, I'm crushing it in that respect.

Jason Pfeiffer (6:54)

Awesome.

Melissa (6:55)

Yeah, that's great. So I moved up to northern Alabama for a job on farm which has since closed down and also had a bunch of problems. But and looking for a place to live. I found this awesome cabin in the middle of a wildlife preserve and I live in this wildlife preserve and I go walking and foraging every day and I hang out with my dogs and have my little garden work my car. Just living my best redneck life right now.

Jason Pfeiffer (7:28)

So wait, but why is work which Also sounds like it's very outdoorsy and working the land and all that stuff. Like, why is that not as fulfilling as what you just described?

Melissa (7:41)

Because I think I have so much experience in farming that I want to be in control. And I. First of all, what I'm doing is not really even farming at this point. It's more of a maintenance thing and it's for the government. And my libertarian sensibilities make me freaking crazy when things are, you know, money is wasted or just things go very slowly. But yeah, there's not enough to do. And what there is to do isn't the direction that I'd like to do. And I like that higher level juggling a lot of balls. Because if you're truly running a farm, you're an entrepreneur and you're doing so many other things.

Jason Pfeiffer (8:23)

Right. So if I can break that answer down into a couple component parts, it's like one of the things that you really want is autonomy.

Melissa (8:34)

Absolutely.

Jason Pfeiffer (8:36)

And then another thing that you really want is to feel like you are fully utilized.

Melissa (8:41)

Yes.

Jason Pfeiffer (8:42)

If you just took your answer and like, broke it up into concept parts, what else is there?

Melissa (8:48)

Yeah, I guess feeling like what I do actually matters in some way.

Jason Pfeiffer (8:54)

Meaning you meaningful work.

Melissa (8:57)

Absolutely.

Jason Pfeiffer (8:58)

Now let's just use these three component parts. Autonomy, feeling fully utilized, and having meaning in the work that you're doing. On a scale from 1 to 10 for each of these, how would you say they rank with your current work situation? So Autonomy Scale from 1 to 10, what do you get?

Melissa (9:21)

Well, everyone basically leaves me alone to do what I want, but I don't have the freedom to start projects. So I'm going to go with like a six.

Jason Pfeiffer (9:32)

That's pretty interesting because it depends on, like, you've just defined autonomy for yourself because some people would just be very happy with being left alone. But what you want is actual influence. You want autonomy to shape an organization, not just to be left alone inside of an organization, Right?

Melissa (9:49)

Yes. And I guess maybe more than autonomy, it's like, it's just that challenge part of it, where the wheels are turning. So if I were to take on something new that I don't really have the skills for, that could keep me satisfied just learning and trying to dive into that. So it's more of a. Yeah. Upper level thinking that I need to do on a daily basis and problem solving.

Jason Pfeiffer (10:12)

Yeah. And that that overlaps with the next one, which is feeling fully utilized because they're utilizing some skills of yours. But there's a lot that isn't being utilized. So what would you say, scale of 1 to 10, how much are you as a whole talented person with a body of knowledge being utilized?

Melissa (10:29)

Yeah, like a four or five.

Jason Pfeiffer (10:31)

And then. Meaning sounds pretty low.

Melissa (10:33)

Yes, we'll give it a four.

Jason Pfeiffer (10:36)

The reason I wanted to do that was because I have a theory of work and change called the 1% problem. And the 1% problem is that sometimes we're like 99% there towards what we want, and then there's 1% that's missing. And that 1% nags us so much that it feels like the entire thing is actually broken. It's a kind of princess and the pea problem. And I wanted to put this to you, and this might not apply to you at all, but I'm voicing it so that you think about it, which is like, is this situation, it's not good for you. It's not perfect. You shouldn't stay there for, you know, ever, or maybe even much longer. But I'm curious about when you step back and you look at, like, all the things that it does provide you, and then whether or not there's a way to leverage what you're doing there or the connections that you've made there to fill in, like, the 1%, like, do you need to hit reset and try some totally different random thing? Or is a lot of the structure of this environment actually working? It's just that it's the wrong farm, it's the wrong, wrong challenges, it's the wrong people, but it's like, almost there. Or do you need to say, you know what? Screw it, I just cannot work on somebody else's farm. This is a hundred percent problem. And I, like, have to start my own thing. It's the only way in which I will have these things.

Melissa (12:02)

Oh, there's absolutely somewhere on somebody else's place. I would be happy, but I would have to dive really hard to find it, and I would have to move. And that's been kind of my whole thing throughout, you know, my 20s is just moving around to different places, and I'm kind of over that. Like, I want to be rooted here. And also, this is just a general problem, like one with farming. It's like, if you have managerial skills, there are not a lot of small farms that need that. Because either people run their own farm or if they don't, like, they don't know what they're doing, but they want to have input. And I guess my thing is, like, I think that there could be somewhere I could be happy, but also just the money Isn't there like farming? There's no benefits really. It's just there's so many trade offs and everything. I consider I'm just like bogged down in trade offs right now. And I think that's great because I'm realistic, but I don't want to just stay where I'm at because I'm scared of. Not even scared, but just because I'm analyzing and kind of having analysis paralysis on all these other things. So I think that there probably could be a good situation out there in my area. I'm not sure.

Jason Pfeiffer (13:20)

As you're talking, there's an interesting little ecosystem of challenges that you're grappling with. And one of the big ones that I think we need to address before we address anything else is what in your world actually needs to stay the same. Because you just told me, for example, that you don't want to move again, which is fine. Moving sucks. And you have found, like when I asked you the things in your life that are going really well, the thing that you described was your living situation. You really love it. And so giving that up would be a huge bummer. But you have to know in any situation, like what is fixed and what is variable because that's going to impact not just the next decisions, but also maybe how you come to think about those next decisions. So is that fixed? Like should we proceed and should you proceed as you're thinking about what's next with that your living situation or at least where you are is a fixed thing. Like we're not going to change that or is that changeable?

Melissa (14:26)

I would like it to be fixed. I think what's changeable is like I'm willing to rescale, I'm willing to do lots of different work. So yeah, I think I'm super flexible on the work end at this point, but rigid on where I'm at.

Jason Pfeiffer (14:42)

And the things that you want in your work are that you're going to want some autonomy, you're going to want to feel challenged, fully utilized. Although you're saying you are up for some reskilling. So that could be a kind of different utilization and you want to find some meaning. Can you go through a little exercise with me which is can you come up with a sentence? It starts with I and it should be really short and every word in the sentence should be carefully chosen because it is not subject to change. But that this describes the thing that you want to be or the thing that is your mission statement of sorts. I'll give you an example for me. So throughout my career I have been a magazine editor, I've been a newspaper reporter, podcaster. But I have found that the challenge with creating identities around any of those descriptions is that all that stuff is really changeable. I could get fired from a magazine and then I am not a magazine editor. And so if my identity is I'm a magazine editor, then I don't know what to do. So I came up with this sentence for myself. And the sentence is, I tell stories in my own voice. And the reason I like that is because stories gives me incredibly broad latitude. It's anything. What is the thing for you? What is the mission statement? The sentence that starts with I, that has words that are really specific about you, but also aren't easily changeable.

Melissa (16:20)

I guess I'm a creative problem solver who wants to use my hands in my head to make something better every day.

Jason Pfeiffer (16:32)

I love that. Tell me about the area that you're in and what you think is possible that would achieve that sentence that you just said.

Melissa (16:41)

Sure. I applied to a forestry position and they don't tell you up front that you have to live within 45 minutes of where you are. So it was actually a position further away. But they said, hey, we're going to shop your resume out to a bunch of folks near you. When people retire, maybe you have a shot at that. We think you might be a good fit. So that was a really great boost. But I am. It's government agency and I don't know how much sitting around there is. And also I'm really stuck on that. But I just, I cannot stress how slow moving some of these things start to feel to me.

Jason Pfeiffer (17:21)

You know, I totally get that. But let's challenge that for a second because I think it's important. Of the jobs available where you are, how many of them are government?

Melissa (17:35)

Not a great deal. I think if you are in forestry or something like that, like there are private companies. But I would have to invest a little time for somebody to want to hire me just because I don't have the specific skills quite yet.

Jason Pfeiffer (17:51)

I'm asking that because it's just like, what are the realistic expectations here? Because if where you are right now is tied to government and the forestry thing is tied to government, like maybe that's something that you have to just accept and then say, you know what? Even though government is a very slow moving organism, I'm going to figure out how to do my best work inside of it because it is the work that's available. And also, frankly, look Libertarian or not, everyone can agree we're better when we have a government full of people who want to do good work. So that would be you, if you so choose.

Melissa (18:29)

Right? And then I guess I was thinking maybe of learning a skilled trade like iron working. There's a lot of jobs that are, you know, I'd have to drive an hour or something, but that's not undoable, you know, that doesn't pull them out. And then I guess also just the entrepreneurial side of, like, maybe I can start something. Like, I do have those unique skills. So I forage. I do other things that I think there is a market for, but just like the opportunity cost of doing those things and just having them not work out. I'm like, man, do I really have time to waste if I have the goal of eventually having my own farm? Like, I don't want to just kind of bounce from thing to thing that I'm like, this is my get rich quick scheme, you know? But I. I do think there's. Those are ways to use my skills from here, you know?

Jason Pfeiffer (19:24)

But wait, you just said the goal of having my own farm is everything that you're doing leading to that. Because you're telling me contradictory things. And I get it because this question of yours is tied up in so many other things. It's tied up in your past and your present, in your future. But I just want to point out to you the contradictions of one, telling me you'd be open to reskilling as an iron worker. And then also, my goal is to have my own farm. You're probably not going to have your own farm as an iron worker. Maybe you can, but that would be a unique farm. So pick these things apart for me. What is the most important? What's not? Like, is having your own farm a fixed thing? That's what we're working towards. Or is that just an idea, one of many?

Melissa (20:14)

No, it's kind of always been a fixed thing. But if I thought that I could take out a loan and just crush it and go do my thing, I would do it. But I've seen so many people who are skilled farmers who just can't make it work that I'm like, I don't know. They say, like, don't quit your day job when you're starting a farm. And I'm like, I don't even really have a day job that pays well, you know? So I'm like, I need to get a day job so I can not quit it.

Jason Pfeiffer (20:46)

Stick around. Help wanted. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it. Okay. It feels like the foundational decision that needs to be made before anything else is, do you quit farming? Or anything like farming. Do you quit being the kind of person who utilizes the skills that you have developed to work on a farm or anything that resembles farming? Is that the first question that you need to face?

Melissa (21:23)

I think it's a big question. Or at least saying quit makes it seem super final. But at least, you know, putting it off the table. In terms of what I'm looking for in employment, I'm open to it in that work doesn't have to be all things. And I get a great daily dose of being out here. I guess my parameter in my head, that's also super fixed, which makes some of this even more unrealistic. Now I'm realizing is the wanting to work outside. And it's like, I could be in a city working outside, doing some of that. Like, that's why the iron working. It feels because, like, you're working on buildings, kind of like the rough in of stuff. So you are outside a lot, and it's good money, but it's just like the outside piece seems to throw a wrench in it. And then I'm also like, hey, I speak French and Spanish, and, like, I can communicate with folks, and I'm a good graphic designer. And it's like, none of that matters if I want to work outside. So I think it's just, like, where my focus is, you know?

Jason Pfeiffer (22:28)

But you don't just want to work outside is the thing. Because I call you back to autonomy, feeling challenged, feeling fully utilized, and finding meaning at work.

Melissa (22:37)

Right. Because I'm already working outside. Yeah. So you're already working outside. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Pfeiffer (22:42)

So that's not it. And, like, spending years and years or whatever it takes to master ironworking and then working on buildings in the city, I mean, that doesn't sound to me at all like it's going to fulfill these really core things that you laid out before. If you're working with an ironworking team on a building, you don't have a whole lot of autonomy. You can't change the structure of the building. You're probably not even going to feel all that challenge, to be honest with you, because once you reach a certain level of mastery, you're going to be repeating that skill instead of constantly reinventing something. You may feel fully utilized or you may not. Because what would be nagging at you is going to be all this time that you spent Learning farming that is not being utilized at all. And you may or may not find meaning or you may tell me that you know, in the way that working for the government bothers you, that also, you know, just building this next bank building is also not going to be incredibly meaningful for you. Right. I think that it's helpful to pick some things that you can stay with for a little bit and then figure out if there's a way to achieve greater happiness inside of them before saying. And I think it's great that you are willing to say I'm open to anything. But the problem with saying that I'm open to anything is that you're like you're giving yourself infinite directions to go in, which means that you're not going to do any of them. So let's narrow. So the reason why I asked you is it time to quit farming? Which I know quit is a very. Is like a harsh word there, but was because I wanted to see like what your willing to utilize as the starting point of a series of decisions. And your answer was you're willing to consider leaving it. Yeah, right. Okay, that's interesting. But what you didn't say is yes, I have to. So let's start with this. I'm not telling you what to do, but for the purposes of the thought experiment, you will stay in farming. Unless it turns out to be a really bad decision, you will stay next you want to do something with this skill set that you have in the geographic area that you live in. Next. What are those jobs? And we need to start looking at those. The forestry one is great. You're talking to them about that. You've identified something that you might not like about it. But there are going to be other things that you do and maybe you could take that job. And autonomy goes up to seven and fully utilized goes from a four to five to a six or seven and that's progress. So tell me now that I have made some decisions for you which you can dispose of at any time. But tell me other things that you could do that you haven't done yet or people to talk to that you haven't talked to yet.

Melissa (25:36)

There are more conventional farms. There is actually a watercress farm which I. I didn't really know that was a thing but it's a little ways away and they, I saw, had an ad for like a foreman and it pays decently like in the range that I want. But I guess I'm just nervous. There's things about it that I'm like, oh, what if you know. But I should just explore it and then I will know the answer to the what ifs, at least more after talking to someone.

Jason Pfeiffer (26:08)

You need to start experimenting. And I would start with what feel like pretty reasoned experiments, like incremental experiments, right? Testing out the watercress farm, which also is not a thing I've ever heard of, is a much smaller experiment than reskilling as an iron worker. And the reason I'm using the word experiment is because experimentation is a liberating concept, or it should be. Because one of the great things that drives analysis, paralysis that you've been experiencing as you're sitting here looking down infinite highways in infinite directions, is that every decision that you're considering feels like some kind of large commitment, or it feels like a major shift, or it feels like it's going to set your path in some totally different direction because you don't know which one to commit to. You feel like you don't know which direction to go in at all. So what happens if you just treat it like an experiment? What experiments can you run that don't require, like years of new work to see if you can find situations that you move you a little closer to that goal? And maybe taking a forestry job and saying, you know what, I give this six months. I'm going to see if I feel better about it, maybe even set a goal and see if in six months you have achieved it. Here could be a goal. I've given you these four things that you want. Autonomy, feeling challenged, feeling fully utilized, and finding meaning. And you have given numbers to these things for your current situation. Take the forestry job six months later, fill out that chart one to 10. Did everything move up at least one or two notches? If so, I would say good experiment, right? Like, good experiment. If they move down two notches, then the experiment was a failure and it's time to do something else. But maybe that was progress and maybe that means that you stay in forestry for another six months or whatever. Or maybe it means that, you know, it's time to go try the watercress farm or whatever, right? But I think that once you have some sense of exactly what you're working towards and a way to measure it in some way, then making changes that don't feel crazy but feel logical are really just going to start to expand your understanding of what you want and the many different ways you can get.

Melissa (28:48)

It, that definitely helps. I think the premise that we started from that I'm just gonna try and do what I am good at and want to do, but in a better setting, I think that feels a lot better than just throwing it all away. And I guess if I do kind of set a limit on it and say, hey, I'm gonna try three or four different things, and if none of them come to fruition, then maybe it's the industry or my relationship to that. And, you know, there's certain things that just not meeting. So maybe I'll consider completely reskilling after that. But it's like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know?

Jason Pfeiffer (29:30)

Yeah. Or you change one factor. The problem that you have, I think, after hearing you for a while, is that you have conceptually at least, opened yourself up to changing every single factor in your life. And as a result, everything seems crazy. It's, like, impossible to figure out what to do. And if you think about, like, trying to fix a computer, which I, you know, I know very little about trying to fix a computer, and you probably do, too, considering your line of work. But one thing that we can imagine here is that if you want to try to fix a computer, what you don't do is, like, get your hands in and, like, just change every damn thing every single time and see what happens. No, you change one thing at a time, right? You're like, is it plugged in? Yes, it's plugged in. Okay, let's try the next thing. The next thing is, is it on? Okay, let's try that. Now. The next thing, right? You do one thing at a time. And I would say that right now it's really useful to say, okay, here are the things that are fixed. What's fixed is that I'm staying in the industry that I'm in and that I'm staying in the geography that I'm in. So the next thing is, what is the variable? The variable can be where I work. All right, so let's try that. And let's say that you go around and you try a couple of those, and it's not quite solving the problem for you. Let's pick changing one other variable. What is the next variable to change? The next variable to change maybe is where I live. Maybe it's, you've tapped out everything in that area and it's time to try farming somewhere else. Or maybe it's, I'm going to stay here, and the variable that's going to change is the industry that I'm in. But, like, one thing at a time. Because when you start changing every variable, you give yourself too many options and there's A study. I love the study is this. These students from some university, I can't remember, they're working with some professor. They set up a stand inside of a supermarket, and they pose as people who work for a jelly company and they are doing samples. You walk into a supermarket, you see somebody's giving out samples at a table, and they're sampling jellies. Every hour, they change the number of options of the jellies. They go back and forth between, like, four jellies on the table and 20 jellies on the table.

Melissa (31:49)

Right.

Jason Pfeiffer (31:49)

So it's like one hour, there's four jellies that people can sample. The next hour, there's 20 jellies, and then they go back to four and they go back to 20. And the result of this is fascinating. The result of this is that when there are more jellies on the table, more people come by and sample. But when there are fewer jellies on the table, more people buy. And I think you are putting too many jellies on your table.

Melissa (32:10)

Absolutely. I'm, like, walking around, just cramming them all in my mouth, seeing what's going on. But if I look today, I'm like, oh, I don't like grapes. Let's just. Yeah, for sure.

Jason Pfeiffer (32:20)

Right, exactly. So thank you for rolling with my metaphor here. So, right. So it's like you need fewer jellies. Who doesn't? There's not enough jelly metaphors in the day, so you need fewer jellies. And I think that we are just for the purposes of, like, thinking about what's next, we are taking some things off the table. Doesn't mean that they can't come back on the table at some point. But for right now, you gotta figure out the singular change that you're gonna make. And it means reducing choice. And once you've done that, I think you will see some other options that are worth taking seriously or considering. And you should try them. And you will learn something. And whatever that something is will leave you more informed about what's next than you are now.

Melissa (33:10)

Yeah, that's great. It really breaks it down and makes it not so intimidating.

Jason Pfeiffer (33:15)

Great. All right, so at the very beginning, I asked you, what do you want in a single sentence? And your answer was, I want work to be as fulfilling as other parts of my life. And that's, I'm sure, still true. But after thinking about, like, what you're going to try to do next, what's another answer to that question?

Melissa (33:37)

Become a jelly salesman? No, I want to explore possibilities that make my work life more fulfilling, I guess just ramp up the fulfillment that I already do have.

Jason Pfeiffer (33:55)

Yeah, I love that. And that's what I was hoping you would do, which is basically go from at the beginning, you were like, your answer was actually pretty passive, right? You're like, here are the things that work and then there's a part that doesn't work. And now your answer is, here's what I'm going to do to try to make this part work. It's more active. And that, I think is a good start.

Melissa (34:17)

Heck yeah. That's awesome.

Jason Pfeiffer (34:20)

Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason.

Nicole Lapin (34:25)

Pfeiffer and me, Nicole Lapin. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. You want some help? Email our helpline@helpwantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on instagramoneynews and Tik Tok at Money News Network for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe a little dance?

Jason Pfeiffer (34:45)

Oh, I didn't sign up for that.

Nicole Lapin (34:47)

All right, well, talk to you soon.

Melissa (35:05)

Foreign.

Nicole Lapin (35:12)

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