People often wonder why we're so excited to go to work everyday. Is it the paycheck? Is it the variety in what we get to do? Or, is it something else?

Phil:  Jenna, I want to talk about enjoying your career, enjoying going to work.  A lot of people look at us and they're like, Hey, you guys seem excited to go to work every day.  What is it that you enjoy. What makes you enjoy work every day?

Jenna:  Yeah.  So for me, it's people and it's always come down to people like throughout my career, but even like having jobs in high school and stuff.  If I liked who I was working with and who I got to interact with then I was happy.  So for me, I love my coworkers, so I look forward to seeing them every day.  And then I love my patients and who I get to work with.  Then you add in like a lot of the other like side things that I get to do.  And in all those instances, I really enjoy the people.  So I think it comes down to like...

I had a feeling, but I couldn’t articulate it.
I had a blast, but I didn’t know why.
The projects were hard.
Sometimes they took years.
Many times they were frustrating.
The projects were critiqued.
I was critiqued.
But I enjoyed it.

As part of the Professional Rebellion, we help people complete a values exercise to determine what is most important to them. This provides a foundation to help them live a life and a career that they love. When we created a new version of this exercise, I had to test it out on myself. One of the questions asked me to think about the times in my life that I felt most fulfilled.

As I looked back on my career, I recognized that my deepest fulfillment came from when I was in a group of people seeking to solve a problem or to create something new. We would sit and debate, discuss, get frustrated, and have ideas. These projects were so big they frequently took over a year to complete. Day in and day out we struggled together to achieve small wins...

Yesterday started as what seemed perfectly.  We had recently gotten a new Keurig at work and it has made me look forward to arriving early and making a cup.  So, I came in early and watched as the Keurig brewed my coffee.

The water tank looked low as I hesitantly pressed the start button, hoping that I wouldn’t have to fill it before making my cup.  It used all of the water except for a quarter of an inch at the bottom. I felt a huge triumph as I realized I was in the clear and my cup started filling.  I narrowly dodged having to fill the machine.

I happily sat drinking my coffee until I heard a co-worker complain, “Ugh, no one ever refills this.”  My triumph ended up being a crappy start to her day.

At work, we fall into one of two people- we are the type that refills the Keurig after we’ve used it for the next person or the type that fills it only when we have to refill it for ourselves.  We are the person that...