Have you seen this show? I have watched it a couple of times with my son and ran across it again last night while channel surfing. It's absolutely disgusting the jobs this guy takes on. You think you're job stinks? How about replacing a pump in a water treatment facility? Or shoveling pig, cow or horse crap? This guy does it for a few hours while their are actually people who do this for a living! How in the world can a person enjoy doing some of these things? I think I found a possible explanation.

I ran across Herzberg's two-factor, or motivation-hygiene theory, which does a good job in simple terms to explain what keeps people satisfied as well as what causes dissatisfaction in the work they do. 

The two-factor was developed from data collected by Herzberg from interviews with a large number of engineers and accountants in the Pittsburgh area. From analyzing these interviews, he found that job characteristics related to what a man does — that is, to the nature of the work he performs — apparently have the capacity to gratify such needs as achievement, competency, status, personal worth, and self-realization, thus making him happy and satisfied ( I know you're thinking, "happy shoveling crap?" It takes all kinds.)

However, the absence of such gratifying job characteristics does not appear to lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Instead, dissatisfaction results from unfavorable assessments of such job-related factors as company policies, supervision, technical problems, salary, interpersonal relations on the job, and working conditions. (Apparently people who replace pumps in water treatment facilities make a lot of money) 

Conclusion: If management wishes to increase satisfaction on the job, it should be concerned with the nature of the work itself — the opportunities it presents for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and for achieving self-realization. If, on the other hand, management wishes to reduce dissatisfaction, then it must focus on the job environment— policies, procedures, supervision, and working conditions.

Practically, I think it's about 'context', it's about what is going on around me. For example, I would love to have a million dollars but spending all of it on myself won't make me happy. Moving up the ladder to manager would be great unless it involves a jerk as a boss. Being the smartest person who ever lived is useless if they lived on an island by themselves.

Herzberg 'discovered' a theory about satisfaction and dissatisfaction that Solomon knew in the book of Ecclesiastes-'Life does not make sense out of the context of God and will never really make sense because we are not God."