The question, of course, is how to be happy. It strikes me that it's a good start to have a job the performance of which can be objectively assessed and in which one is skilled in the art. Plumbers and hairdressers are happy, apparently, and I imagine this is why. Leak: fixed. Hair: cut. Job: done.
If you can't get such a job, then at least try to arrange that whatever job you have wants of you whatever it is that you're good at. (Like Inspector Morse, for example.)
Most of us have jobs that are annoying and stressful, and I will now tell you why. They are annoying and stressful because they don't want from you the thing you're good at: they want the best you can do given the time and money available. So – everyday – you're making trade-offs, compromising your best designs, failing to live up to your potential. That's why teachers are fed up. Also: programmers, designers, architects, and you.
It turns out that there's a way around this. Here's what you do. You arrange for there to be created a single measure of performance that takes into account both the quality of the thing you do and what it cost to get it. Then you make your job maximising that number. You're welcome. So ... are you happy yet? It's funny, but it does seem hard to make this work. Part of the problem is that, typically, you can't get the costs in the same units as the benefits. That's why education is so hard: the cost of running a school is measured in pounds sterling but the benefits are measured in -- what? -- educated students? Hard to compare.
Even when you can do it, it's hard to be happy at it. If you're the sort of person who is happy running a business solely to maximise profit then power to you, it's good for us all that you exist. I don't know why I'm no good at that, but I ain't.
I'm guessing you are not happy yet, either. If so, spare a thought for those who must have the worst job, happiness-wise: the police. (I mean, the police whose job is to stop bad stuff happening, not the police whose job is to catch the bad guys post--bad-guy activity, eg, Inspector Morse.) Not only do you have to make trade-offs; not only are they in the wrong units; but you can't even measure how successful you were. How to measure burglaries prevented? Jewels not taken? Your entire professional life must be full of people complaining that you failed to do your job and cost them money to boot. "I was going to be robbed today, but thanks to the efforts of the Metropolitan Police, I wasn't. Good job, lads." Not likely.
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This is an argument, by the way, that we should not, repeat not, give away our civil liberties in order to make the police's job easier. Some jobs just are difficult, like bringing up coal from underground and developing a grand unified theory of everything. Sometimes people say they'd like their job to be easier but, actually, that's not what they mean. What they mean is that they'd like their efforts to produce results, and those results to be recognised. (Or, if you're a coal miner, possibly that you'd like not to get a lung disease.)
The job of the police is difficult -- necessarily difficult -- and you can't make it easier unless you change the job. The job of the police is to minimise bad stuff in general. You could ask them to prevent specific bad stuff (eg, riots) by creating other bad stuff (arresting protesters). But if you don't want any bad stuff; well, that's just hard.
But you can make the police happier. Just figure out how to quantify their success at preventing riots. At any rate, I think it behooves us not to confuse the two.
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