The Hamster Wheel Problem: Why Comfortable Isn’t the Same as Satisfied

EARLY in my career, I spent about six years just going through the motions. I was busy. I had meetings, email, work, kids, responsibilities, all the normal stuff. If you had asked me whether I had a lot going on, I would have said absolutely. But if you had asked me where all of that activity was actually taking me, I am not sure I could have told you.

At the time, I worked at a university and my family lived in campus housing. We had a place to live. I had a job. Our basic needs were being met. Nothing was really wrong, and I think that was part of the problem. We were comfortable enough that I never felt much pressure to ask whether I was actually satisfied, and for a few years I was satisfied.

Running in Place, Going Nowhere

That is what I mean when I talk about the hamster wheel. A hamster can run like crazy and still end up in exactly the same place. I think people do the same thing. We fill our days, keep ourselves busy, and sometimes mistake all that activity for progress.

My days were filled with meetings, email, and whatever problem needed to be solved next. I worked hard, but I was not spending much time thinking about where I wanted my career to go or what kind of life my wife and I were actually trying to build. I had speed, but not much velocity.

The strange thing about this kind of rut is that it does not necessarily feel terrible. That is why it can last so long. When life is clearly falling apart, we know something needs to change. When life is fine, it is much easier to keep doing exactly what we have always done.

When Change Comes

Then the university told us they were tearing down our dorm, our home.

They wanted to build a recreation center where the building stood. I was not losing my job, and we could have moved into another university building and continued more or less the same life. But the news forced a conversation my wife and I probably should have had much earlier.

If we had to move anyway, where did we actually want to live? That question started small and got big pretty quickly. We began talking about where we wanted to raise our kids, where we wanted to make a home, and whether we really wanted to stay in the same area simply because it was familiar.

Somehow the conversation went from moving across campus to moving across the country. Colorado kept coming up, and eventually I applied for a job at the University of Northern Colorado. What had started as an inconvenient housing problem became the thing that pushed us to make a much bigger change.

Getting Unstuck

Looking back, I am grateful for the jolt. Yet I also wonder how long we would have stayed on that same wheel if the university had never decided to knock down the building.

Most of us do not get a dorm demolition to force the question. Instead, we wait for something else: a layoff, a health problem, a relationship that has been neglected too long, a reorganization at work, or some other moment when staying where we are finally becomes more uncomfortable than changing. I do not think we should wait for that.

There is an important difference between being satisfied and simply being comfortable. You can genuinely like your job, your routines, and the season of life you are in. There is nothing wrong with that. I am not suggesting we should constantly be searching for the next thing or blowing up a perfectly good life because we are afraid of getting too comfortable.

Moving Forward

The better question is whether your life still fits you. Are you doing what you are doing because it is still what you want, or because it is easier than asking what might need to change?

I faced that question again after we got to Colorado. I had a new job and an opportunity to begin a PhD program. We had also just moved across the country with two young kids and were living in another campus apartment. I remember telling a family friend, who happened to be a psychotherapist, that it just did not seem like a good time to start a doctorate.

She said to me and asked, “Chris, is there ever going to be a good time?”

That question stuck with me because, of course, the answer was probably no. There was always going to be work. There were always going to be kids and bills and responsibilities and reasons to wait. If I was waiting for a season when everything lined up perfectly, I could have been waiting for a very long time.

Knowing When to Stay and When to Go

That does not mean every uncomfortable choice is the right one. Sometimes staying exactly where you are is the right decision. The point is to make that decision intentionally, rather than letting comfort make it for you.

When I feel myself getting stuck now, I come back to a few basic questions:

• What roles am I playing right now?
• What do I actually value?
• What do I want from this season of my life?
• What should I be doing if I want to move closer to the person I want to become?

The answers are not always dramatic. Maybe you need to have a conversation with your boss. Maybe you need to learn a new skill. Maybe you need to spend less time on something that has slowly taken over your calendar. Maybe you are perfectly happy where you are and simply need to recognize that this is a season worth enjoying.

And if the answer is “I don’t know,” I use another question that I often use when coaching people: If you did know, what would your answer be?

I do not think comfort is the enemy. I think unconscious comfort is. There are plenty of good seasons in life, and there is nothing wrong with staying in one when it still works for you.

Just make sure you are staying because you chose it, not because you forgot you could choose something else.

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Dr. Chris Mullen is a speaker, author, and consultant whose work sits at the intersection of leadership, performance, employee experience, and work-life satisfaction. A former vice president at a Fortune 500 company, he has spent more than 20 years as a business leader, human resources executive, workplace strategist, and advisor, including senior roles at a global human capital technology company and leading HR strategy for more than 2,300 employees at a major public research university. He holds a PhD from the University of Northern Colorado, where his research examined the impact of mobile technology on work-life balance, and his ideas have been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Harvard Business Review. His new book is Better at Life: Negotiating Finite Time and Infinite Choices (Amplify Publishing). Learn more at chrismullen.org.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:46 AM
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