Consumption, Career, and Fulfillment: A Student Reflection

Consumption Patterns and Professional Awareness

Consumption is something that is necessary for existence. The role it plays in one's life, however, does not need to be all-encompassing. Knowledge of one's consumption patterns can help a person alter those patterns in a manner that allows them to achieve their goals in life. As a professional, consumption rates are likely to be higher, and this can have an impact on both the way business and society operate. I view personal consumption as shaping the choices that businesses make. A decision to purchase is based on a number of criteria. When taking a microeconomic view of the purchase decision, the key factor is utility — the degree to which a good meets the needs of the purchaser.

Over this course, I have reflected on my own consumption patterns, and I feel that doing so has made my consumption decisions better over time. When I started this course, I was perhaps a less conscious consumer. I consumed a great deal — and I still do — but much of that consumption was unfocused. As a business professional, I needed to recognize that when consumption patterns are understood, they can be altered and made more efficient. This has not only changed my perspective toward personal consumption, but toward business consumption as well. I look at the spending patterns of companies for whom I have worked in the past and understand that those patterns were not as efficient as they could have been. While it is easier and more immediate to change my personal consumption patterns, the same lessons I have learned from reflecting on the nature of consumption can be applied to my professional life as well.

As a society, it is not that we consume too much, but that much of that consumption is unfocused. Consumption itself is a zero-sum game — my consumption is somebody else's benefit. However, it is worth considering what benefits we want to see. Some of those benefits are personal — seeking the greatest utility — but some can be societal as well, such as buying American-made goods to keep domestic wealth in domestic hands. By being more conscious about our consumption, we can change the ways that businesses and societies operate.

Applying Critical Thinking to Consumer Choices

Indeed, many of these changes have already taken place. We find utility in lower-priced goods, which encourages businesses to pursue cost leadership strategies. This drives industry to produce in nations with lower costs of production than the United States. Thus, our consumption patterns directly contribute to the offshoring of jobs. In turn, society shifts the ways it generates income. If we can no longer make money manufacturing goods, we shift toward a service-oriented economy. Knowledge industries remain strong, so we redirect our focus toward increasing our education levels.

I am no different from others — consumption is a central feature of my life. Since being asked to think more carefully about my consumption, I have taken greater control over my patterns. It is interesting to note just how easily consumption habits can get away from a person. The first step in thinking about consumption was simply analyzing my own patterns. I found myself, for example, purchasing coffee on impulse and always from the same coffee shop, also on impulse. I realized I had the power to change this habit and was able to reduce coffee expenditures significantly by simply shifting to making my own, using beans from that same shop. I still drink the same coffee, but by shifting my impulses I have been able to consume more efficiently. By being critical about consumption patterns, spending, and the concept of utility, I feel that I will be a better professional consumer as well as a better personal consumer.

Professionals must be critical in order to succeed. They must not only understand the way things are done today but also be able to challenge those assumptions and ingrained patterns. As a leader, my role is to guide business and society in whatever way I can. By influencing those around me to think critically about their decisions, I believe I can have a positive impact. In this way, thinking about the role of consumption in my life has been more than an end in itself; it is a means to an entirely new way of thinking. When new ways of thinking are learned, total knowledge is gained. I can apply these lessons — asking the right questions, being critical, and making detailed, rational analyses — to a whole range of decisions I will face in my professional life. That is powerful, and it started with the decision to analyze my own consumption patterns.

Career Development and the Workbook Activity

The careers workbook activity was insightful. It is important, when aspiring to become a professional and contribute meaningfully to society, to understand the best role for oneself. The careers workbook provided insight into a number of key areas that I had not previously considered.

When I began the career workbook, I held fairly firm beliefs about my career ambitions. I felt that I knew what I wanted to do with my life and how I was going to get there. What the careers workbook allowed me to do was gain greater insight into my strengths and weaknesses and how those matched the career path I had chosen for myself. I learned things I was previously unaware of, and my views about my own abilities and potential were constructively challenged.

Conclusion: Fulfillment as a Means, Not an End

Fulfillment, therefore, is not an end but a means. I see the different types of fulfillment as working together, all the time, to meet my needs and the needs of my friends, family, and community. If my behavior as a professional is consistent with my personal behavior, and if both work toward achieving the world I want to see and live in, then I am already fulfilled. My very definition of fulfillment has changed as the result of this course, and in that way my understanding of what it will take to achieve fulfillment has also changed. I believe now that I have the tools to achieve fulfillment on my own terms, and that is a very powerful feeling indeed.