Last night I was telling a friend how excited I was about the side projects I was working on. My friend asked me why I didn’t feel the same excitement about my “work” and that got me thinking. The only thing I could say in that moment was that I have more autonomy in my side projects. Since that chat, I have been thinking about what autonomy means and why it matters to me.
What is autonomy?
To me, autonomy is me all about having the opportunity to exercise my will in a given dimension. In other words, it is about having more control over the following:
- What I do
- When I do
- How I do it
Of the above, some maybe more important than others depending on the context. Ultimately, autonomy is just a feeling and only you are capable of evaluating if you have enough of it.
Why is autonomy important to me?
Autonomy presents an opportunity for growth. I remember being thrown into situations that I was not ready for and learnt a lot by surviving them and even grew to enjoy them. I think an experience from my past best illustrates this.
During my internship years ago, I really enjoyed taking input from my manager and getting things done. One fine day, I went to my manager and asked him what the next steps should be for something I was working on. He turned around and asked me – “What do you think we should do?” My mind went completely blank since I had never given it any thought and assumed that he would just tell me what to do as usual. His question forced me to think for the first time about the “What” rather than the “How”. Suddenly, I started enjoying my day-to-day even more by making more “What” decisions! I am really thankful for this internship and other such experiences that helped shape who I am today.
But does this mean that I would be happier and more satisfied if I get to make all decisions? It depends.
How much autonomy is good?
To understand how much autonomy is needed, there are some dimensions to consider:
- Effort to make a decision
- Consequences of the decision
Effort to make a decision
According to sources, the average person makes about 35,000 decisions in a day. That’s a lot! So every decision we need to make adds some work for our already busy brains. And we know tired brains make worse decisions and bad things happen. So the fewer decisions we need to make the better. In other words, we should only be making decisions that we absolutely need to make.
Consequences of the decision
Imagine you get to be the CEO one day (seemingly the person with most autonomy in a workplace) and get to define how to spend your day. But you are also suddenly responsible for the livelihoods of people who work for you. Do you enjoy that level of autonomy with that kind of responsibility? The answer depends on every individual (for me, it’s a clear no).
What kind of autonomy do I need?
We have established that being able to make all decisions isn’t always what we want when we say we need more autonomy. So what do we mean? For me personally, what it really means is being able to make decisions in areas that are important to me. For example, I don’t have a strong view on what the roadmap for the company should be for the coming year but I do care a lot about what I will personally be working on. So having autonomy in the latter means more to me and has more bearing on my general satisfaction and happiness.
Let me try and break down why I am more excited about my side projects than “work” projects:
- Deciding what to work on (which allows me to pick ideas which align with my current personal goals)
- Choosing who I collaborate with (I prefer someone who can keep me accountable and complement my skills)
- Flexibility to determine my own schedule (I know when I am most productive)
- Can stop when I want to (probably the most important)
In conclusion, I think there is a general need and space for more autonomy as one grows older. Our society may even have been designed around this idea. For instance, when we were just kids, more structure was deemed necessary to help us become responsible adults. Maybe we all need some structure to start with and then we eventually find our own way out of it. We may still choose to retain that structure in some areas even if we are not kids anymore 🙂