Proximity to Impact

Closeness Influences Satisfaction

I often ponder the satisfaction one must feel when working in a profession where the impact of their work is visible on a daily basis. Doctors and teachers, for instance, work directly with their patients or students, witnessing the tangible results of their efforts through recovery or learning, leading to near-immediate gratification. This perpetuates a positive feedback loop, resulting in a high degree of job satisfaction, in contrast to numerous other professions that are several degrees removed from the final impact their work has on individuals. It may be stating the obvious, but the fewer degrees someone is from this impact, the higher their satisfaction is likely to be.My current situation comprises a job that is five to seven degrees away from its final impact, along with a non-profit where I volunteer, which has a more tangible impact on educating young students and is one to three degrees away from the lives it affects. The range in these examples is due to the subjectivity of determining the number of degrees. I work for a hedge fund within a private equity company, where my team manages around $1 billion of various collateralized corporate bonds for institutional investors.On one extreme, we have a domestic insurance company, and on the other, a Japanese banking institution. When analyzing the degrees of impact from the insurance company side, their shareholders or private owners benefit when we make money for them or prevent their money from losing more value than it otherwise would have. This trail of impact is immensely opaque and difficult to determine. In the case of a Japanese pension fund investor, the trail is marginally more straightforward. My team works to make positive risk-adjusted returns through fixed income investments, which are then returned (less fees and expenses) to the investor and presumably distributed to some extent into the monthly pension payments of the Japanese citizens who are part of that institution's pension program. Although I have never visited Japan, I love my concept of the country, but there would be no reason for me to choose to benefit Japanese retirees over any other group of people. My attempt at explaining the trail of impact that is present in my career hopefully underscores the difficulty in determining the number of degrees that professional work can be away from its ultimate impact on individuals.Analyzing the number of degrees your work is away from the final impact it has on an individual may be an eye-opening exercise worth doing. The outcome of this analysis may be an important factor in your overall job satisfaction and, to a large extent, your life satisfaction, as our jobs tend to be outsized portions of our lives. Additionally, if you find that your work is far from the impact it ultimately has, you might consider adding something to your life that augments this, such as volunteering your time to a charitable organization where you would likely see tangible and direct results of your efforts.