Job Autonomy: How and When to Ask for It

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Do you have job autonomy? If not, what’s the best way to acquire it?

Job autonomy is the ability to control what you work on and how you work, including schedule and office space. It’s one of the traits that make a job desirable. The best way to have autonomy is to develop skills that make you invaluable. First, it’s helpful to know how important workplace autonomy is—and when it’s the right time to go for it.

Read more to learn how and when to secure job autonomy.

Rule #3: Cash in Your Skills for Job Autonomy

Now that you’ve developed your scarce and prized skills, you can start cashing them in for the scarce and prized traits that make a job desirable. In Rule #3, we’ll look at the desirable trait of workplace autonomy. We’ll also look at two autonomy pitfalls and how to avoid them.

The Importance of Job Autonomy

Autonomy is the ability to control what you work on and how you work, including, among other things, your schedule, responsibilities, and office space. Workplace autonomy is such an important determiner of happiness that the author calls it the “dream-job elixir.” Most common dream jobs include autonomy—for example, many people want to own a farm not only to get away from screens and escape their cubicles, but also because the country lifestyle offers so much autonomy.

People who have autonomy in their workplace tend to be happier and more productive. There are several examples that demonstrate this:

Results-Only Work Environments (ROWEs) are workplaces where, as the name implies, results are the only rule. Employees can work whatever hours they want, ignore their email, and dress however they like as long as they get their work done.
- ROWE teams at Best Buy saw increased employee retention.
- People who participated in a ROWE pilot at Gap were happier.
- At the first non-profit to try ROWE, over 90% of employees felt the system made their lives better.

In one study, Cornell researchers studied two groups of small businesses, 150 of which didn’t give their employees any control, and 150 of which did. The businesses that gave their employees control grew at 400% of the rate of the non-autonomous businesses.
In another study, researchers found that when middle school teachers who worked in difficult school districts were given autonomy, they were promoted more quickly and their students’ performance improved.

Two Pitfalls

When trying to cash in your career capital for job autonomy—for example, by asking your manager if you can change your hours—there are two possible pitfalls:

Pitfall #1: You Don’t Have Enough Career Capital

As we learned in Rule #2, you need to develop career capital before you can buy job autonomy. If you attempt to seize autonomy before you’ve earned it, it won’t last because you won’t make money—if you prematurely demand autonomy from your boss, you’ll either be denied the request or fired. If you choose to start your own business, you won’t be able to find clients because you have no experience. Either way, you’ll shortly have to take on a non-autonomous job in order to support yourself.

For example, many followers of the lifestyle-design movement—a movement to break free of the rat race and live life on your own terms—fall into this trap. They think all they need to succeed is the courage to quit their day jobs and forget about the necessity of career capital. One young professional the author encountered quit his day job to write a blog about how blogging funded his lifestyle. However, his blog wasn’t actually making him any money, so his content was weak and his only piece of career capital was enthusiasm. Enthusiasm isn’t scarce and prized and wasn’t enough to buy him workplace autonomy. Few people read his blog and he eventually gave up posting.

(Shortform note: Read our summary of Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek for more on lifestyle design.)

Pitfall #2: Resistance

The first step to buying job autonomy is acquiring enough career capital to pay for it. However, once you have this career capital, you become so valuable to your employer that they don’t want to give you any autonomy for fear of losing you and your skills. Job autonomy might make you happy, but it doesn’t do anything for your employer. It’s typically in your employer’s best interest to keep you working for them as many hours as possible, on their terms.

Therefore, as you gain career capital, anticipate that your employer will resist your bids for autonomy. They’ll offer you more money or status to try to keep you, but if you want autonomy, you’ll have to turn them down. Additionally, you may encounter resistance from your friends and family, because they think it’s a bad idea to turn down raises or promotions.

For example, Lulu Young started developing her career capital by earning a degree in math. She then took an entry-level job as a software tester. She figured out a way to automate the testing, which saved the company money, and she was promoted. Only at this point, after acquiring capital, did Lulu make a small bid for autonomy—she asked to reduce her working hours so she could go back to school part-time. Her employers didn’t want her to work fewer hours—they wanted her to spend as much time using her skills to help them as possible—but she was so valuable they had to agree because they didn’t want to lose her.

Job Autonomy: How and When to Ask for It