I'm about to give you a job. We'll agree a fair salary, more than adequate to meet your needs. There is, as you might expect, one slight catch...

There are actually nine jobs on offer, and a computer is going to randomly select which one you are given. Three of the jobs are for a year, three of the jobs are for three years, and three of the jobs are for five years. Three of the jobs you would love; three of the jobs you would hate, and three of the jobs won't matter to you one way or another. Now here's what I want you to do...

1. Draw a "nine-box grid" on a piece of paper, labelled as below:

Love Indifferent Hate
One Year

Three Years

Five Years

2. I will pay you the same salary, more than adequate to meet your needs, regardless of which of the jobs you are randomly assigned. What I want you to do is fill in the boxes with the dollar, pound, yen, or relevant currency amount that I would need to pay you in a non-taxable cash bonus at the end of your 1, 3, or 5 years with me such that whichever of the jobs you were assigned, you would be equally happy with what you got.

Some Clarifying Tips:
a. This game will help you quantify the relative value you give to financial reward and job satisfaction, critical information in the pursuit of optimal life-work balance
b. It helps some people to specify an example of what the jobs would actually be that fit the relevant "love, indifferent, hate" categories, ie. "CEO, Manager, Office junior", or "World-class Brain Surgeon, Saleswoman, Sanitation Engineer".
c. If you find yourself saying "I wouldn't play the game", "I'd renege if I didn't get the job I wanted", or "there is no amount of money which would make me take a job I hated", congratulate yourself on your cleverness and/or high standards and challenge yourself to try again! :-)

You've got the job for three years that you're utterly indifferent about - Congratulations!

Now before we go on to the analysis - if you're massively disappointed to get the three year indifferent job, go back and play with the numbers until you're delighted. In fact, why not go over all your numbers until whichever job you got would be a delight?

How to analyze the grid:

I have done this analysis with over five hundred people, and while it's wonderfully inexact, there are patterns that emerge again and again. As we go through, you can apply the analysis to your own chart - I'll do an analysis of one of the grids I received in the post....

Love Indifferent Hate
One Year 10K 30K 50K

Three Years 100K 150K 1 million

Five Years 200K 1 million 10 million

1. SANITY
The first thing to check for is that you understood the exercise! In almost every case, the numbers should get larger from left to right and larger from top to bottom. The one exception is that some people want to be paid more to have to give up a job that they love after only one year!

2. SCOPE
I have done this exercise with a bookseller whose 5 year hate bonus was 25,000, and with an Internet Millionaire whose 5 year hate bonus was 25 billion.

Remember, you and you alone were responsible for any limits you put on what you would be paid. What does the relative size of your bonus tell you about what you think it is plausible for you to earn? Would it pay to expand your mental sense of possibility?

The other thing to think about scope is at what point does the amount of money involved allow you to change the game? The above-mentioned internet millionaire realised that while 25 million didn't really allow him to do much more than 10 million, 25 billion would allow him to influence the world in a very direct, very profound way, and that, for him, made 5 years at a job he hated a labor of love.

3. TIME
Look at the "Love" column above. There is a 10x difference between 1 and 3 years (10k to 100k), and only a 2x (100K to 200K)difference between 3 and 5 years. In the "Indifferent" column, there is a 5x difference between 1 and 3, and nearly 10x between 3 and 5; in the "Hate" column there is a 10x difference between 1 and 3, and 10x between 3 and 5.

Typically, people have a number of "critical mass" time thresholds. Here are two of the most common:
a. A time frame beyond which it doesn't much matter (i.e. the first three years are the worst - after that, there's not much difference between 5 and 50 years in the job). If there is a much smaller difference between 3 and 5 years than between 1 and 3, this may apply to you.
b. A time frame beyond which it gets much worse quickly (i.e. you can put up with anything for 3 years, but after that, every minute hurts!). If you had a much larger difference between 3 and 5 years than between 1 and 3, this might apply to you.

When playing with clients, we can often find an exact time threshold that maps out against their previous career - i.e. they enjoy a new job for 2 1/2 years and then something mysteriously goes wrong. Armed with that knowledge, you can design your work life to build in radical change every 2 1/2 years, even if you stay in the same line of work or with the same employer.

4. JOB SATISFACTION
In the above example, for the first year, it would cost me 3x as much to employ them in a job they're indifferent to compared to a job they love, and 15x more to employ them in a job they hate. After three years, it would cost me almost nothing to give them an indifferent job to a job they love, but I would have to pay 10x more to give them a job they hate. In five years, the stakes go up again. 5x more indifferent to love, and a whopping 50x increase in bonus to get them to take the job they hate!

Once again, there are some typical thresholds here, falling into two main categories:

a. Love to Indifferent
For some people, only a job they love will do. Indifferent is not much better than hate. If you scored significantly more of an increase from Love to indifferent than Indifferent to Hate, this might apply to you.

b. Indifferent to Hate
For these people, Love and indifference are just shades, and the real color change doesn't happen until you get to hate. If your hate bonuses were significantly larger than your love and indifferent bonuses, this probably describes you.

Once again, it can be useful to become aware of your own personal thresholds, as it will not only explain past work behavior but give you a tool to use in choosing and directing your future.

Have fun, learn heaps, and may all your success be fun!