I was reading a book called Virtual Society (by Herman Narula) recently, and while by no means the focus of the book, he briefly mentioned our current economic model, and touched on the idea of a fulfillment economy. The ideas was, at its simplest, this: our current economic model prioritizes output, capitalization, and a labor-intensive work force. On the other hand, a fulfillment economy leads the way by prioritizing worker fulfillment, which will invariably lead to higher output as a result.

While I haven't read it yet, I believe that the book Bullshit Jobs talks about this as well, focusing on the idea that many of the jobs in today's workforce are essentially filler jobs, performing monotonous tasks and essentially leading to an unfulfilling job. A quick google search on the idea of a fulfillment economy led me to this [article](https://www.wework.com/ideas/research-insights/expert-insights/step-aside-information-economy-the-fulfillment-economy-is-here), which spoke more about what this could mean. Aaron Hurst put it like this "There are three sources of fulfillment: relationships, impact, and growth", and it's something I find incredibly interesting. Many of us have worked jobs where we've felt wholly unfulfilled, and at the end of the day, we page it down to the simple fact that it's just a job. But it could be something more.

My research into the flow state suggests something similar, where in order to achieve peak performance, we are required to be sufficiently interested, challenged, and capable of solving a problem or performing a task. A workforce and economic model where the majority of people were searching for relationships, impact, and growth, would in essence lead to a more productive workforce in the traditional sense of the word, purely based off of the fact that workers would me more likely to enter the flow state at their jobs. When sufficiently challenged and interested in the tasks being completed, you're more likely to enter the flow state and perform at a higher level.

But is it really possible? While the optimist in me would love to see a reality where it definitely is, it also seems unlikely. Our current economic organization model requires many jobs to be labor-intensive, unfulfilling jobs. While at a high level the prevailing idea could certainly be abstracted to white-collar jobs, the blue-collar jobs that underpin our economy would be unlikely to adopt this model, as it doesn't quite fit the nature of the work.