I think this is an important area of research and it's great to see you trying to summarize the research in a digestible manner for people to apply but my impre

I think this is an important area of research and it's great to see you trying to summarize the research in a digestible manner for people to apply but my impression from this article and other material I've read is that there's still a lot more work to do to tease out correlation and causation and translate the research into actionable advice. For example, assuming that 'Work that helps others' is actually causative (and not that happier people tend to choose that work), what are the identifying characteristics of that type of work? What makes midwifery (from the article) more satisfying than say serving in a restaurant? Both appear to help others. Is it the magnitude of the help? The degree of personal engagement? How can someone better identify 'Work you're good at'? Again, assuming it is causative (and not that happier people rate their own competency higher), how can someone effectively identify their comparative advantage? Presumably for career choice there is a strong effect of demand vs. supply in skills - I can be 'good' at snowboarding by most people's standards but have no chance of making a career at it. The advice on its own is not very actionable. The article makes a common conflation of high achieving individuals with work satisfaction and yet the two do not necessarily match up (do we know that Steve Jobs and Einstein were more satisfied with their lives than average?) and these two examples from the article seem to not fit the 'Work that's engaging' criteria of 'Clear tasks, with a clearly defined start and end.' or 'Feedback, so you know how well you’re doing.', at least in the short to medium term. Like I say, I think this type of research is valuable but I find little that is clearly actionable in my own life, with the exception of simple things like 'avoid long commutes' and from elsewhere in the happiness literature 'spend on experiences rather than things'.