Our jobs—what we do—hover heavily over our very existence. Before the pandemic, a lot of job advice was about pursuing your passion, as though our purpose in life must be defined by our job or hustling till we drop from exhaustion. Now, all I hear about is burnout and The Great Resignation . Either way, the conversation about our lives is always a conversation about our work.

Why do our jobs have to dominate so much of our life? What if there’s another way to look at work?

Maybe your job is just a job.

I like my job, but the job that I do doesn’t define who I am. As much fun as fussing over words can be, technical writing is not my passion. Given my past jumps across jobs and industries, it may not even be my career. And that’s ok.

It’s ok to think of your job as “just a job.” It’s still important to do it well, but there’s no harm in thinking of it the way the dictionary does :

“a regular remunerative position”;

“something that has to be done,” like grocery shopping or filling up your car’s gas tank;

or “something done for private advantage.”

That last one—private advantage—can range from the mundane (grocery money) to the fantastic (save up to retire early). The point is, a job is just a job: an exchange of your labor for your employer’s cold, hard cash. But it’s also something that you can use to your advantage to help you further your personal goals.

Use your job to learn new skills

If your work provides resources for learning and development, use them.

Learn skills that will increase your pay. My friend Liz got her master’s degree program fully reimbursed by the school where she teaches. She learned new skills and got a pay bump once she finished. At Zapier, where I work, employees have a budget we can use for conferences and continuing education. I’ve used mine to learn more about things like project management and content design. These skills will help me be better at my current job, yes, but they’ll also help me leverage a higher salary at whatever my next job is.

Learn skills for personal fulfillment. Another friend of mine, Nina, asked her employer to pay for her art classes. She’s an engineer-turned-designer, and she was able to make the case that art classes would improve her skill set. In the meantime, she got to do something that brought her joy.

Learn skills to switch roles. Have you ever been interested in another type of job? Find someone at work who has the role that you want, and reach out to them to learn more. Mika, a user experience researcher here at Zapier, started on our recruitment team. But she’d always been interested in user experience (UX) research, so she tried it out and eventually made the switch. Maybe you make that switch inside your current business , or maybe you shadow someone in your business and then apply for roles elsewhere.

Use your job for the benefits package

If your employer provides benefits, max them out as much as possible. Whatever form they take, you’ve earned them. If a store clerk was giving you $5 in change, would you refuse that?

Sometimes those benefits might not be flashy, but you can still use them to your advantage. Years ago, I had a second job as a restaurant hostess. It didn’t pay much, and it didn’t provide insurance, paid leave, or company-matched retirement contributions. But what it did offer was a meal for each shift that I worked. I earned a paycheck, saved money on food costs, and got to eat at a high-end restaurant. That was something I couldn’t afford on my own, so it was a great perk.

My coworker, Deb, just used her office setup budget to buy a fancy new Wi-Fi router. Her Zoom calls don’t lag anymore, and side benefit—her Netflix now streams like a beast. The point: make sure you know every benefit available to you, and make the most of it.

Use your job to build relationships

I know, I know. This sounds like a fairy tale ending. But when you spend 40 hours a week with other humans, you’re bound to develop some kind of relationship with one or more of them (hopefully positive ones?). You don’t have to be interested in becoming lifelong friends with your coworkers, but there’s at least value in networking with them.

I’ve shared resources with coworkers, learned from my peers about something I didn’t know but needed to, and found new jobs through old colleagues. I’ve even made lasting friendships through work. (Sorry, I had to wrap it up in the fairy tale ending after all.)

So yes, it’s ok to view your job as just a job—I do. But that doesn’t mean the paycheck is the only thing that’s valuable about it.

This article by Michelle S. was first published on the Zapier blog. Find the original post here .

7 behaviors that may predict your company’s odds of survival

This article was originally published by Built In .

The old way of working is dead. Its death throes began decades ago, and the COVID-19 shake-up has slammed the lid on the coffin.

In a world of flux, we all have to be 24/7 learners, innovators and collaborators. Yet most companies continue to allow, encourage or even force workers to keep up their old rugged-individualistic, head-down, fear-driven, Industrial Revolution-era ways. Many leaders don’t even realize these old-school dynamics are at play in their company. And if they do, they may not know how dangerous they are.

No business can compete for long in a marketplace that requires constant transformation when people show up to work in a way that squelches innovation. And it doesn’t matter how much you insist your culture is innovative if the behaviors happening around you inhibit innovation. (To paraphrase Emerson, what your employees do speaks so loudly that no one can hear what your mission, vision or values say.)

The new way of working requires employees to continuously learn, unlearn and relearn so they can adapt to the reality of the world as it evolves. I call this “hyper-learning,” and it requires leaders to lead in a way that encourages this to happen.

My new book, Hyper-Learning , identifies seven foundational behaviors that are necessary for people to be hyper-learners. They’re a good yardstick for any organization. Look around. If you don’t see these seven behaviors in action, you don’t have an innovative culture. The proof is in how people act every single day.

Behavior 1: Managing self

The best thinkers, the best learners, the best collaborators and the best listeners have learned how to manage their inner world: their ego, mind, body, and emotions. This means people have a quiet ego and are open-minded and good at not knowing things. They don’t reflexively defend, deny or deflect when someone challenges them. They are willing to change their position when they get better evidence. When talking to others, they have a quiet mind and are fully present and focused totally on listening and trying to understand what the other person is saying. They control their negative emotions and rarely fly off the handle.

Red Flags: A person who can’t “manage self” always has to be right. Others may describe them as defensive, arrogant, judgmental or super-opinionated. A person who frequently interrupts people or who multitasks while listening to others. A person who behaves in disrespectful ways or can’t control their emotions. A person who raises their voice or who glares at people.

Behavior 2: ‘Otherness ’

No one achieves success by themselves. In the Digital Age, their success will be highly dependent upon their ability to build caring, trusting relationships at work that enable the highest levels of thinking and learning with others. Otherness is a mindset — a belief that they need the help of others to see what they don’t see because of their tendencies to seek confirmation of what they believe. Otherness is a behavior — behaving in ways that show they respect the human dignity of the other person. Success in the Digital Age will require otherness. A competitive survival-of-the-fittest mindset will be the quickest pathway to failure. This person’s biggest competition in the Digital Age will be themselves, not others.

Red Flags: A person who rarely asks others for help. A person who believes he is better than most people. A person who views each conversation as a win-lose, zero-sum game. A person who will not prevent someone from doing something wrong because they want them to fail. A person who gossips negatively about others. A know-it-all. A braggart.

Behavior 3: Emotionally connecting in positive ways

The science is clear: Positive emotions enable better learning, better decision-making and more willingness to explore, create and innovate. A positive emotional work environment comes about because people bring their positive emotions to the conversation. They understand the power of slowing down to be fully in the moment, and they express their positivity by smiling, by their tone of voice, by their calmness and by the words they choose to use. They behave in respectful ways to others — even if they disagree with what is being said. They express gratitude often (i “thank you,” “I appreciate that,” or “you are kind”). A positive emotional environment in a meeting liberates people in that people can sync their positivity with each other and be fully engaged without the limitations of worries, insecurities and fears. People can be their best selves, so you have the opportunity to have high-quality conversations that can result in team flow that can lead to “wow” results.

Red Flags: People who are rude to each other. People who use body language that says, I am not really listening to you or I am dominant . People who put down others. People who are closed-minded or not engaged. People who are constantly interrupting or raising their voices and moving forward, getting ready to attack verbally.

Behavior 4: Effective collaboration

This begins with leaders. They know how to set up meetings so that people feel psychologically safe to join in. Leaders have created an environment where collaboration is not a competition — an environment where people care about each other and trust that no one will do them harm. During meetings, people are fully present, attentive and connected to each other. Everyone gets to speak. People challenge the status quo and seek the best possible idea, regardless of the status or position of who suggested it.

Red Flags: The highest-ranking people dominate and aggressively push their views. Meetings are not genuine open discussions. Instead, the answer is predetermined, and the real goal is consent and compliance. Some people don’t speak up at all. Too often, critiques get personal.

Behavior 5: Reflective listening

People who exhibit this behavior allow others to talk. They reframe what they think the other person is saying to make sure they understand. They ask clarifying questions before telling, advocating or disagreeing. When they do disagree, they critique the idea, not the person.

Red Flags: People don’t make eye contact. They interrupt. They multitask during meetings. They are great tellers, not listeners. Their egos are wrapped up in showing the speaker that they are the smartest person in the room.

Behavior 6: Courage

In the Digital Age, everyone will have to excel at going into the unknown and figuring things out. That takes courage: the courage to try. A person with courage is willing to experiment, even though they know they might fail. They also understand that most learning comes from having conversations with people who have different views. They don’t mind having respectful but difficult conversations. You’ll find them volunteering for new projects, openly sharing their views, and asking for lots of feedback.

Red Flags: People are unwilling to take risks. They seem guarded and closed-lipped. Because they fear making mistakes or looking bad, they rarely step out of their comfort zone.

Behavior 7: Evidence based decision-making

When employees possess this behavior, they are not married to their ideas. They are more open-minded. They never assume. They are always seeking data, even if it will disprove their theory or even force a return to the drawing board. They seem to get the statement “I am not my ideas” on a deep level.

Red Flags: People defend their ideas even when there’s no data to support them. They rarely ask for the input of others (and if it’s given, they don’t listen to it). They are invested in being “right.”

If you see most of these seven foundational behaviors in action, you’re on the right track. If you see a lot of red flags, you’re in trouble. The good news is that people can change their behaviors.

It takes a lot of intentional work. But as is always true, the first step is admitting you have a problem — and the second is realizing the upside of changing outweighs the downside of not changing.

Accessibility will make your product better — for everyone

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter!

One of my friends used to run a company that was growing fast and needed to hire a CTO. She tapped her network and spoke to a bunch of potentials, trying to find the perfect candidate. After some search, one person stuck out in particular.

He wasn’t living in the same country though, so the first conversations all took place over the phone. After having spoken with the entire management team, and most of the dev team, they felt confident enough to invite him to the office for a face to face meeting.

As they went over the details, the prospective CTO asked if he could discuss the building layout with someone. They were confused for a moment and asked why this was important, to which he replied: “I’m blind.”

He needed the building layout to help navigate the office, which he was perfectly able to, once he had time to familiarize himself with it. Until that moment, nobody had considered this an option, and obviously, nobody had thought to ask, and the prospective hire did not feel it relevant to share this information either. And it turned out to be mostly irrelevant too. Yes, they made a few small adjustments to the office to accommodate him, but apart from that, his handicap was never an issue.

My friend later admitted she was glad this all went the way it went, and she was able to judge him purely based on his technical skills and not have the fact that he is blind cloud her judgment. He turned out to be one of the best hires they ever did.

It’s not all roses and sunshine, however. When I asked her how he’s doing now, she explained that it gets harder and harder for him to do his job. The market is dominated by open-source software that does not take the blind or visually impaired people into account.

This is an incredible waste of talent.

Now I can understand if some people think that optimizing for a small group of blind people might sound like it can’t be a startup‘s first priority. A similar argument is sometimes made for diversity: startups should focus on revenue, hire the best people, and diversity or accessibility is a second or third priority.

If you’ve read my earlier weekly columns , you know I disagree strongly. Diversity is an efficiency tool: the more diverse your team is, the higher your ability to solve problems and create solutions.

The same goes for accessibility: if you start to think about making your creations accessible for people with disabilities, they’ll become more accessible and easier to use for everybody.

A basic example: if you design a site that’s optimized for people with slow connections, it will be super fast for people with fast connections. If your site is easy to navigate for the visually-impaired, it will also be super easy to navigate for those who can see without impairment.

Gandhi once said that the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. The same can be said for every product and service out there.

Can’t get enough of Boris? Check out his older stories here , and sign up for TNW’s newsletters here .