While not a direct solution, one helpful background force is the A-word. Ageing. A strong pattern found in job satisfaction data - and happiness and stress data - is that wellbeing is U-shaped (or, more precisely, J-shaped) in age. In other words, feelings of contentment start high in your early 20s, then fall for a bit, and then begin to rise smoothly throughout the rest of your life. Researchers have now uncovered this pattern in random samples of workers from more than two dozen nations. What it means, in the modern world, is that one of the secular trends around us will gradually do its best to offset some of bur work-life balance difficulty. The steady ageing of the workforce will move more and more of us into the rising part of the job-satisfaction-age curve.
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