Your job is not your career and knowing the difference is important
“Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.” — Katharine Whitehorn
“What do you want to become when you grow up?” Every kid faces this question. I wanted to be a Robotics engineer at one point. I liked Robots. Nobody asked me why. The “what” question makes us think about the profession we want to have which equates to the “job” one wants to do. What if I don’t like the job? Now I am stuck with my image of who I am based on my job pulling my identity into question. Also, the idea of what I want to become makes it look like there is only one way to reach there, setting us up on a path of acceptance rather than exploration. Instead, what if we were asked, “what would you like to do?” If I say, “I want to help people” then I can achieve that goal by being a Doctor, a soldier, an artist, and more. The answer gives a sense of purpose — why I do what I do — without the constraint of “how I do it.” This to me is what a career is.
I was conditioned to think of my work as my career. I entered the workforce asking “what can I give to my company” and not the other way around. I did not have the understanding to distinguish between my career and job. Not knowing this meant I attached my happiness, my relationship, and my progress in life with my work. My identity was my job as a software engineer. And when I realized I was not as good at my job I was not sure who I was. If I wanted to be my best version, then I needed to be the best engineer, though the reality was far from it. Soon I lost track of planning a career and I started planning in terms of the next interesting task. After a long time I realized that a job is only a part of my larger life. When you do a job you are focusing on the impact a task/project creates. But how does that impact you beyond money? The answer to that can come from a career focused work. Career can give you a destination(s). It should be something you want to give your time. Your career gives you an end and your job provides the means to reach that end. Job can lead you to achievements but a planned career can create your legacy.
Escape rooms
Imagine, you are in an “Escape Room.” Your objective is to uncover clues that lead you towards unlocking the final door to escape the room. I want you to imagine the scenarios and the clues as your “job/designation”. You join a company that has its own agenda and you are given a role to play in the larger scheme of things. Your objective forms the narrative for your career. Your objective can be to escape this specific room. Your objective can also be to escape as many different rooms and become the best at “escape rooms.” When you are in the room, you work on identifying the clues and advance towards the final escape. If you do your “job” of solving the clues well, you get “promoted” to next levels to solve clues that keep increasing in difficulty. But you gain experience along the way to meet the challenges. You will need teammates to solve certain rooms. You might get efficient in escaping with a group of people (your colleagues at work) and even lead them as you gather more experience. Not all rooms can be solved alone.
If you forget your objective and focus only on solving clues, you will eventually escape the room but you might not realize the achievement. You will drown yourself in wanting to solve more puzzles. Some people love solving puzzles for the sake of it and there is nothing wrong with that. But as your experience grows, it gets harder to find challenging puzzles. On the other hand, if you know the goal you are moving towards, you utilize all your knowledge to solve the puzzles with a purpose. Now when you escape, you know your next challenge is not in this same room but elsewhere while your goal is still to escape tougher rooms. As you solve more puzzles you enjoy doing them (your job on a daily basis) both for the joy of solving it and for what it propels you towards — your legacy. Would you want to be stuck in a room solving the same problems or know what you are moving towards and keep finding ways to advance?
A job is a job. It is not who you are as a person. A career gives you focus on what you want out of your time. Clarity with what you want out of your time gives you a sense of purpose, the ability to know when to celebrate your wins and find work that aligns with your values. If you know your career you will have more opportunities open up and your job need not define you as a person. You will find ways to contribute to your goals. You can start thinking about this with some basic questions:
- Where do I want to invest my time?
- What are my priorities in life beyond myself and my family?
- What are my skills that can help me achieve what I want from a career?
You would have heard that career is a marathon. Even a marathon has a finish line and without that you will be running a never ending race. Pace it well but do not run without a destination. I am in the process of figuring that out and it is not easy. But at least I am not feeling useless as a human if I have a bad day at my job. Hope you can escape that feeling too! Let me know what your views are.
