Do you have work criteria?

Viv McWaters is one of my favorite bloggers as she posts on Beyond the Edge. I like her sense of connection, community, improvisation, facilitation, and work. I appreciated the criteria she created to determine projects she would work on:

• Can I make a real contribution? Is there a need for my skills? Will I make a difference?
• Will it stretch me? Is it edgy? Will it contribute to my continued learning?
• Is there an opportunity to build capacity, and transfer my skills, knowledge and enthusiasm to others?
• Will it enable me to make money and provide for the future?
• Is there an opportunity to travel to new or interesting places?
• Will I be with cool people, especially friends? Will I potentially make new friends, and build existing relationships?
• Will I have fun?
• Am I excited by the prospect?

These criteria are specific for the type of work that Viv does. Do you have criteria for your work? What are your criteria? Do you use them to make your work decisions? I encourage you to get more from work and ensure you work on the right work, for you, by establishing a set of personal criteria for work. By the way, you don’t have to have each piece of work fulfill all the criteria but certainly the more criteria the work is aligned with the better for you and others.

David Zinger is a global employee engagement expert at work on his criteria for work in 2013.