Donna had been in and out of jobs around her hometown all her adult life. Sometimes she worked, sometimes she didn’t. Donna didn’t mind working. She just never had any particular attachment to a job, employer, or workforce. Sometimes, she moved from one job to another job without even really thinking much about why. Then one day, Donna realized that the friends and acquaintances with whom she’d entered the workforce long ago had nearly all advanced in their fields, even if many of them had also changed fields a time or two or three across the years. Donna, though, was still doing entry-level jobs, wherever she went. Donna’s realization made her wonder whether she hadn’t treated her jobs right. Had she been missing something about the nature of jobs and work?
Definition
If you’re going to work most of your adult life, you may as well know what a job is. Indeed, if you don’t give at least some thought to your job and work, then you might end up like the figure in the above illustration. You’ve probably known someone like the above figure who just never seemed to get on in a job, almost as if they never really figured out why they worked or what a job entailed. Yet you’ve probably also known individuals who knew exactly what a job was and how to do it for the best advantage of everyone. The point is that you get to choose. You may be fine drifting through your work life, never truly taking hold. A job doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone. Just don’t blame your job circumstance on anyone else. You don’t entirely control your job, but you can certainly influence it. And to do so, you must generally have a sound idea of what a job is.
Jobs
A job is a productive activity done at the request and direction of another for compensation. Jobs can be lots of other things, but jobs routinely include these three features: (1) productive activity; (2) employer direction and control; and (3) compensation in return, such as wages and benefits. Keep those three features in mind. Each is important in its own way. Failure in any of those three respects can lead to job dissatisfaction or termination. If you’re not sufficiently productive, you do not follow employer instructions, or you do not receive sufficient compensation or sufficiently justify it, then something is definitely wrong. Yet as much as each of those features is singularly significant, the balance of those three features is also important. Too much or too little of any of the three features in proportion to the others can wreck a job, one way or the other. The telling proverb is not to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain. The worker, work, and return should all balance within your job.
Work
It may also help to distinguish a job from work. Work is productive activity. Work is thus one component of a job. We work at our job. Yet work misses the other two components of a job. Work need not have an employer controlling it or compensating for it. We work not only at a job but at our school studies and at home. God made and fitted us for work. We engage in productive activity nearly from the time we rise until we go to bed. We work in the kitchen, laundry room, and yard. We work to keep up our vehicles, clean the house, and balance the checkbook. We even work on our fishing technique or golf game. And none of that work involves a job because no one is paying for it or directing it. Work becomes a job only when we submit to assignment and direction, and receive compensation in return. Appreciate your capacity and willingness to work. But also appreciate the control and compensation components of a job, beyond the work component. If you’ve got a job issue, it may have to do with any one or a combination of those components.
Fields
Also distinguish your job from the field in which you work. Your field is the type of work you do, not the specific job you occupy in that field. The field in which you work may, for instance, be healthcare or, more narrowly, medicine, nursing, mental health, or occupational and physical therapy. But within those healthcare fields, your job may involve clinical, laboratory, administrative, or other support roles. You may love the field, sector, industry, trade, or profession in which you work but not like your job. Or you may love your job but not like your field. If you face job challenges, try to discern and distinguish whether your issues are with your field or instead with your job. If you don’t make that distinction properly, you may end up changing your job or field but not solving your employment issue. A job is one thing. The field in which you do that job is another thing.
Careers
Also distinguish your career from your job. A career involves a long-term commitment to a field, whether you hold one, two, three, or more jobs in that field across the course of your career. You might, for instance, have a career in technology but successive jobs as a coder, analyst, developer, and project director. Or you might, for another example, have a career in industry while holding successive jobs as a laborer, apprentice, machinist, maintenance machinist, die maker, and production manager. To have a successful career, you generally need to be effective at your job or jobs within the career. For career success, you may also need to advance from job to job within your field at an acceptable rate. In some fields, like the military, higher education, and law, the rule may effectively be up or out. This guide addresses job success, not career success. See the equivalent Help with Your Career resource for guidance on advancing in your career, which can present a whole different set of issues.
Temporary
You should also distinguish whether you are working in a temporary job or permanent employment. Permanent employment doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll remain there forever. A permanent job instead means that the duration of your employment is indefinite. You might stay for a long time, or you might not, but no one is setting an end date for your employment in the short term. By contrast, a temporary job holds the expectation that you are not long for the role you’re currently fulfilling. Your employer may have hired you for short-term work such as around the retail holiday season, for a specific construction job requiring extra help, or to help bring in the crops at harvest time. Or your workplace may have retained your services through a temp agency that recruited and placed you, to fill in for a permanent employee on maternity or disability leave. The expectations of both the worker and workplace differ around temporary jobs. Make sure that you are ready to adjust to temporary or permanent employment, in whichever role you fill.
Second
Expectations can also differ between primary jobs and second jobs. A primary, full-time, or day job is the job to which you devote the greater part of your time and commitment, typically around forty hours per week. Nearly all of this guide’s discussion addresses your day job. Yet millions of Americans work second jobs or side gigs. A second job is generally one that entails part-time after-hours work on weekday evenings or weekends. Delivering pizzas or driving for a ride-sharing service are classic second jobs. While second jobs can in the best instance expand one’s skill and advance one’s career, second jobs are generally instead for extra income to satisfy short-term demands, such as paying off student loans or medical debts. Don’t expect the same commitment to, or security or return from, a second job as that you expect your day job to provide. Read more about how second jobs can advance a career in the Help with Your Career guide.
Meaning
The above discussion addresses traditional ways of thinking about a job. Yet a job can mean much more to you and your employer than productivity, compensation, and control. A job can mean structure and routine in your life and the lives of your family members. A job can mean engagement with your community through the activities of your work. A job can mean active participation in a cause, life-giving service to individuals, or sustaining relief for families. A job can also spur personal growth, support vital creativity, enable sacrificial service, and build strong character and a lasting legacy. You can, in other words, work a job without giving much value to your productivity or compensation, or thought to your control, if you instead prioritize these other opportunities and values. A job can mean a lot of good things if you learn to treat it right and to insist that it treats you right, too.
Relationships
A job also entails a set of significant relationships with the owner or owners of the entity for which you work, the director, manager, or supervisor under whom you work, and the co-workers and subordinates with whom you work. The customers, clients, students, or patients whom you serve in your job, and the contractors and suppliers who support your workplace, can also make special communities of relationship. Your productive participation in a structured workplace can help you relate to others in stable, positive, and encouraging ways, when doing so in informal relationships without service and structure can be significantly more difficult. When workers retire or resign from a job, they often don’t miss the work but do miss the people and relationships. Don’t undervalue the relationships that your job provides. They can be your key to job satisfaction and success.
Reflection
Setting aside for a moment any thought of your current job, what does a job generally mean to you? Which of your current job’s three components, (1) productivity, (2) control, and (3) compensation, are working well for you right now? Which components are not working so well? What uncompensated work do you do outside of your job that has significant value to you or others? How many jobs have you held in your current field? In how many different fields have you worked? Is your current job in your career field, the field to which you hold the strongest long-term commitment? Is your current job permanent or temporary employment? Have you held second jobs at times? If so, for what reasons? What do you value most about your current job, outside of the compensation and benefits it provides?
Key Points
Defining what a job is can help you clarify your job expectations.
Jobs generally involve productivity, compensation, and control.
Job success generally requires balancing all three components.
Work is productive activity, while jobs add compensation and control.
Distinguish your job from the field in which you do your job.
Also distinguish your job from the long-term career you pursue.
Permanent employment has an indefinite end date.
Temporary employment has a short-term end date or temp status.
Day jobs offer returns that second jobs generally do not provide.
You can find deeper meaning in your job beyond work and pay.
Job relationships can be among our most significant relationships.