Jason Gardner on true job satisfaction

Jason Gardner

Ben Southall had better watch out. The beginning of the Summer so far has been cold, too cold. The thought of anyone jetting off to take care of an idyllic sun drenched island for six months is enough to drive anyone to insane jealousy. He'd better hire a bodyguard.

For those of you who've missed this particular media circus, the tourism board of Queensland ran a campaign to employ someone for 'The Best Job in the World' - the job? As hinted above simply being a caretaker for one of the 600 luscious islands around the great barrier reef. Day to day chores include scuba - diving, feeding the fish, zipping around on your own dune buggy and lolling about in a gorgeous 3 bedroom villa.

It is only for half a year but Ben - the lucky winner - does get paid £74,000 for his pains.

Well I guess someone at Queensland tourism board deserves a big slap on the back. The whole idea was to generate interest in the region and what better way to do it than to provoke the green eyed monster in all of us and generate an obscene amount of media coverage at the same time. 34,000 people applied for the job, so there are probably 33,999 people booking flight tickets to see what they've missed out on right now.

It does beg the question though why is this the best job in the world? Why would we consider that swimming with dolphins; drinking margaritas whilst watching the sunset and commuting via jetski would constitute the greatest career move?

OK stop daydreaming. Well for one thing we've got a leisure obsessed society. The idea of taking chunks of time off to do whatever we please only really took root in the 20th century. Before then a lot of people didn't even get Sunday off. The only time people took a break was on Holy Days, which is surprise, surprise, where we get the term holiday from.

Now, for many, work is something that interrupts our leisure time. And, in a country which relies heavily on its tertiary industry - services and retail, a lot of us make our money from what people do in their leisure time: shopping and eating. We may complain about the long hours we work but we eat out and go out more than ever. And how many of those 9-5 minutes are spent sneaking in the odd leisure activity? A little bit of Facebook here, a lot of Second Life there?

Many of us are weekend warriors: work is a drudge and we live for those few moments that we can call our own. That's why six months in paradise sounds like the ultimate job: it's 'leisure' time thinly veiled as work, it's not the best job in the world but the best holiday in the world.

So what is the best job in the world? Well an awful lot of experts would say that it's one that gives you a sense of purpose: work that you find meaningful. At the end of the day the pay doesn't make the difference nor does environment, it's all about the satisfaction of making a difference.

That means the best job in the world could be considered by others to be something really menial but for you it gives you an opportunity to make other people's day that little bit brighter or it helps you save to put children through college.

It's a good litmus test: can we find meaning in our work? Is scraping enough money together to see us through the weekend enough of an incentive?

So six months in Eden is probably long enough. Long enough for Ben to realise that he needs to go out and get a proper job.