While working towards financial independence, you may get stuck in a job where you find it difficult to experience job satisfaction, for any number of reasons.

I’ve been there myself.

During and between my two pregnancies, I worked for a boss who made life difficult for me.

I was undergoing demanding fertility treatments and also caring for my dying mother, and I couldn’t imagine also looking for a job or changing careers – so I had to put up with several years of working under a disapproving boss.

There may be many personal reasons why you might have to stay in a job where you’re no longer happy, at least for a while.

Achieve Job Satisfaction Anyway

Sometimes we have to put on our rain gear and walk out into the storm. But how do we defy the gloomy weather and enjoy jumping in the puddles as we move forward?

I had several years to practice cultivating small moments of happiness and creating job satisfaction in an otherwise difficult situation.

Because that’s life sometimes – at least before you achieve financial independence.

There’ll be times when you have to pull yourself together, show up and just do the work. 

Day in and day out – even when it’s really hard. 

The good news is that you have the power to control how bad it feels. You can make the best of it.

Here are my seven tricks for achieving more job satisfaction:

1. Remind Yourself Why You Took the Job

 

You must have had some positive reasons for taking the job. Perhaps you saw it as a step towards something else.

Focus on what you get out of it.

Try to remember where you were when you took the job. Maybe you needed the income? Maybe it was a step in a new direction you wanted to go in? Maybe it was something you wanted to try out?

In my case, I remembered that it was my dream to become a newspaper journalist. I wanted to be part of solving problems. I got to focus on trying to help or entertain people every day.

I was there for the reader. I was there for the greater good.

My job was not so much about me, and that made it easier to show up every day. Oh yeah – and the money was pretty nice too.

2. Cultivate Gratitude

 

Every day, find three things that you are grateful for during your workday. Everything counts.

Whether it’s lunch in the cafeteria, laughing and joking with a kind colleague, the view from your desk, or a new budding friendship.

Write down what you are grateful for.

Read it later and savor the feeling. Practicing gratitude really helps increase job satisfaction.  

In my case, my gratitude was about the small things. The sight of snowflakes on Copenhagen City Hall. A walk in the park during my lunch break. Warm rye bread with butter from the cafeteria in the morning.

3. Remember Who You Are Helping

 

In any job, you are helping someone.

If you’re managing a shop at a gas station, think of all the motorists you’re helping to get where they need to go. 

Without you, they wouldn’t be able to visit their sick Aunt Helen in the countryside or pick up their children from school.

Your help is important.

Knowing that you contribute also helps increase job satisfaction. 

 

4. Set Boundaries

 

You need to take care of yourself and make sure you set solid boundaries, whether it’s leaving on time or getting a little fresh air during your lunch break.

Maybe your boundaries are about saying no to tasks that aren’t really yours.

Set your boundary – but do it kindly.

Remember, you don’t always have to explain. You can just state it. 

Sometimes we make ourselves weaker by explaining, because in reality we are trying to justify ourselves and get the other person’s permission to set a boundary. You can’t always expect that.

Just state your boundary, shut up and smile.

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that today.” 

That simply. 

5. Make Sure to Do More Than You’re Paid For

 

You need to set boundaries and take care of yourself. But… you should also look for opportunities to give more than what is expected of you.

Is it possible to do both? To give more than expected and maintain your boundaries at the same time?

Yes, of course it is.

You can leave on time and make sure you get enough rest, while also doing something extra to help while you’re at work.

Let’s go back to the example of the gas station attendant.

The other day, I needed air in my tires. I found a tiny gas station where the owner always provides the most wonderful service. I was standing there looking puzzled at the water hose (don’t ask). The owner came running out to give me the correct hose. Not only that: he put air in my tires for me and explained everything about it.

Putting air in your tires is a free self-service. I had just been to another gas station that had a hole in the air hose – which meant it was actually sucking air out of my tires. When I mentioned it to the teenager working behind the counter, I only received a shrug.

The friendly gas station owner refused payment. In return, he can be sure that I will fill up there from now on.

So ask yourself: where can you be extra helpful today? Who can you smile at? Who can you give a little boost to – without expecting anything in return?

6. Reward Yourself After an Effort

 

When I worked in a difficult environment with tasks that didn’t suit me well, I always made sure to have something good waiting for me after a specific task.

I wasn’t allowed to have my first cup of coffee until I had planned my day’s work. 

Only when I had done the interviews was I allowed to have lunch.

When I had written the draft for the first article, I rewarded myself with a 10 to 15-minute walk.

I also use this as a motivation trick with my kids every day: “Yes, when you have tidied up, we can play tag.”

7. Build Up Your Skills and Your Brand

 

Look ahead to the next thing in life and start preparing.

How?

You need to build two things up: your skills and your brand.

You build up your skills by learning something every day. You can learn on the job and by taking courses, furthering your education, reading, and learning.

You build up your personal brand by networking and through your online presence.

Are you already in the industry you want to make a career in? Then make sure to expand your network.

Create an online presence by using social media to connect with relevant people, and make sure to share helpful professional tips there. SoMe is another way to network.

8. Use Time to Build Assets

 

I know I said seven tricks, but here comes the one about giving more than expected… you get an eighth point here.

It’s important to set aside money and invest so that you can become financially independent, so you can avoid being forced to stay at an unpleasant workplace in the future. 

You can use time to your advantage to become better at investing. Learn more about how in my e-book Free Yourself. You can download it here.

You can learn how to do your own analysis and calculations in my e-book right here. 

Sometimes it’s nice to have the rules laid out so you know what to do and what not to do.

 Perhaps this is precisely why Christianity, Islam and Judaism are so popular among large populations around the world. Because it simplifies things when you have simple guidelines – and even rules. It makes navigation through life easier. 

Well, don’t worry – the value investor Mohnish Pabrai has synthesized stock market investing into 10 commandments.

In this blog post, I’ll go through these 10 rules. 

Some of them are written for hedge fund managers, but as a private investor you can still use them. 

How? 

In case you want a fund to manage part of your portfolio, make sure they live up to those rules (in particular, 1 and 2). 

Ready? Here they come:

1. Thou Shalt Not Skim Off the Top

Funds shouldn’t charge a management fee.

Most hedge funds charge a 2% management fee and get a cut of 20-25% of the profit. 

ETFs and mutual funds usually just take the management fee. 

Mohnish Pabrai copied Warren Buffett’s structure (and so have I in my fund). 

In his original partnership, Warren Buffet did things very differently. He took 0% in management fees, but earned a quarter above a hurdle of 6%. 

What’s the problem with charging a management fee?

It’s typically a percentage of the entire amount invested – and has nothing to do with the result.

This means that the fund or manager is paid regardless of how the fund performs. Does the fund lose 50%? They still take a percentage of the entire amount invested.

If the fund or manager is only paid when they achieve a return above a certain performance hurdle, it means they are motivated to perform well. 

Let’s say a fund gets a fee of 2%. If you invest a million with them, they’ll charge 20,000 for it – even for doing nothing or doing badly. To get the same salary, Warren Buffett or Mohnish Pabrai would have to make a return of at least 10%. More reasonable, right?

A performance-based payment is fairer for the customer, and it creates an incentive structure that’s in your favor.

2. Thou Shalt Not Have an Investment Team

 

A fund should not hire a big team of traders and analysts to do the work. 

Pabrai says that the first bid automatically leads to the second bid because the fund will be more careful with building up fixed expenses. 

A large investment team not only makes the process more expensive – it also makes it more complicated.

“They just have to find 2-3 good companies a year, and it only takes half a person,” Pabrai says. 

It doesn’t really matter how big the fund is. He explains that Warren Buffett manages billions and does it mostly alone. 

Years ago, Pabrai actually wrote a letter to Buffett and offered to work for him for free… which Buffett turned down. 

Buffett answered that over the years he has come to the conclusion that he works better alone. 

3. Thou Shalt Accept That You Will Be Wrong a Third of the Time

There’s a lot of uncertainty when you try to estimate the future of a company, and you will be wrong – often. 

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you don’t necessarily lose money just because you’re wrong.

Phew.

Being wrong means that things don’t turn out quite as you originally expected.

Maybe you expected the stock to triple, but it “only” went up 50%.

“With this way of investing, you’ll do really well, even when you make mistakes,” Pabrai says. 

How come?

Mohnish Pabrai is a value investor, and with that style of investing, you always invest with a margin of safety. 

For example: you figure out what something is realistically worth… and then you cut it in half, and that becomes your target price where you are willing to buy stocks.  

4. Thou Shalt Look for Hidden P/E of a Stock

A P/E of 1 means that in one year the company earns what corresponds to the market cap. 

The market cap is the company’s shares multiplied by the share price. This is the value of the company in the market. If you wanted to buy the whole thing, that is what you would be paying.

Mohnish Pabrai tells many battle stories of how, over time, he has invested in companies that were extremely cheap when looking at the market cap. 

For example, he invested in a company (Rain Industries) that had $2 billion in revenue and a market cap of just $200 million. In other words, the market valued them at 1/10 of the revenue.

Sometimes we get mispricings that are very much in our favor as buyers. These kinds of investments are great for your financial health, he says. 

5. Thou Shalt Never Use Excel

Pabrai says that if you find yourself reaching for Excel, you are probably doing something wrong. 

“You don’t need a calculator – you just need the fingers of one hand to figure it out. The math is pretty straightforward,” he says. 

Mohnish Pabrai’s IQ is higher than most people’s. He is also funny and provocative… not unlike his guru Charlie Munger.

When he says something black-and-white, like banning spreadsheets, you shouldn’t take it literally. 

I personally don’t see anything wrong with using a spreadsheet. The point is, if you have doubts about the company’s intrinsic value, you probably haven’t figured the case out yet. 

Before diving into the spreadsheet, it’s a good idea to look at the overall numbers like Mohnish Pabrai does.

What’s the revenue, and what’s the free cash flow and how much do they earn? And how much is that compared with the overall market value of the company?

If the market cap is lower than their earnings potential, it’s an easy case. 

“The market will come to its senses at some point. It won’t continue to value it at that level.”

6. Thou Shalt Always Have a Rope to Climb out of the Deepest Well

Mohnish Pabrai tells a touching story about his father who was a serial entrepreneur that took many risks – and went bankrupt several times.

His father paid an astrologer dressed in orange robes to tell him that the future looked bright. He came to the family’s house and drank tea and spoke of a prosperous future. 

Mohnish Pabrai confronted his father and said that it was a scam, to which the father – who was a man of logic and science – replied: “You must always have a rope to climb out of the deepest well.”

Mohnish Pabrai experienced his own private well when his hedge fund fell 70% after the financial crisis. 

The fund’s assets fell from 600 million dollars to 180 million dollars from 2007 to 2009.

Since Pabrai didn’t receive a management fee, he had to pay himself a salary and the bills covering the fund out of his own pocket. 

The fund had to return to the starting point and then rise above 6% before he could start paying himself a salary again. In order for him to receive a commission, the fund needed to grow to at least 636 million in 2008 and around 675 million in 2009 with no money being added. 

“I found myself at the bottom of a very deep well. So what did I do? I violated commandment no. 5 and fired up Excel,” he says.

He imagined what life would be like with 1 billion dollars in the portfolio. 

“I suspended all logic and imagined talking to the orange-robed guy… and then life was fine again,” explains Mohnish Pabrai.

In fact, the fund grew to 1 billion and everything did turn out fine, exactly as Mohnish Pabrai imagined. 

7. Thou Shalt Be Singularly Focused like Arjuna

Arjuna is a central character in the ancient Indian tale Mahabharata.

The bow master Dronacharya tied a fish high on a branch in a tree above a lake and ordered 12 students to aim at the fish’s eye while looking only at the fish’s reflection in the water.

He asked the disciples one by one what they saw when they looked at the reflection in the water.

The disciples mentioned everything: the sky, the water, the tree, the fish… except Arjuna.

When asked the same question, Arjuna said that he only saw the eye of the fish. The master told him to shoot, and Arjuna’s arrow pierced the fish’s eye.

The point of the story is that too much information is an obstacle for you to focus – and a barrier for you to achieve what you want.

It’s the same when we invest. There’s a lot of noise: inflation, forecasts, speculation, oil prices, interest rates, employment numbers, and so on. 

“None of that is relevant to what we’re trying to get done. We want to identify companies within our circle of competence and figure out what they are worth, and if they are available for a quarter or less of the value,” says Mohnish Pabrai. 

8. Thou Shalt Never Short

Shorting is betting that something will decline in value, and that’s an exercise that never made sense to Mohnish Pabrai.

“Your maximum upside is double if the company goes to zero and the maximum downside is bankruptcy,” he says. 

When we buy shares in a company, we don’t need to put in more capital when it goes down. But when we go short in the market and it goes up, we have to put in more capital, Pabrai explains. 

He also explains that Buffett and Munger have said that they are right almost 100% of the time and wrong on the timing almost 100% of the time.

“It’s perfectly fine when you buy shares, because you can just wait. But it doesn’t work when you short, because it’ll cost you money every day. You must both be right in your thesis – and be right in the timing of it,” Pabrai says.

He adds, “We don’t want to do anything that requires us to look at the stock every 5 minutes.”

9. Thou Shalt Not Be Leveraged

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”

Pabrai quotes Hamlet’s father giving this advice to Hamlet and he quotes Buffett for rephrasing it into “neither a short-term borrower nor a long-term lender be”. 

What does this mean in practice?

You can, of course, have a home loan(here you are a long-term borrower), but in the stock market you must stay away from all rigmarole that involves leverage. 

This comes in various forms such as using margin on your account or certain option trades such as selling naked calls (selling calls without owning the stocks that could be called away from you – this is like borrowing the stocks). 

10. Thou Shalt Be a Shameless Cloner

Copy the masters, Pabrai says. In other words, you must learn from the good value investors. Watch their technique, investment and process, and do as they do. 

I’ll add this: always do your own thinking and analysis so that you feel confident in your investment thesis. Take the company through a checklist and calculate the value yourself. 

You can use the actions and decisions of others for inspiration, but you must not copy blindly.

Why not? 

Even if the masters are right in their thesis, you might get super nervous when the market fluctuates and dips. You could enter the terrible zone of panic selling.

Knowing what to do and researching things thoroughly will keep you calm in the market.

You can follow the trading of the major value investors here, here and here.

You can learn how to do your own analysis and calculations in my e-book right here.