The Meaning of Work

What is a job? Is it a means to an end or an end in itself? This questions is at the roots of a millenia-old debate intensified by the complexities of the modern workplace. I recently read an article titled, 'Signs you're in the wrong field.' This article was arguing essentially that, if you didn't like your job, you should leave and find some other work. Wait a second, are you supposed to like your job? Is work a matter of preference? A book I read recently, called 'Die Broke,' made quite the opposite argument--that work was just a means of income to fund your life after work. So, which is it? Should we find some kind of fulfillment in the work we do or should we only be in it for the paycheck?

Like anything else I will discuss on this blog, it all comes down to our values. As most of us will spend the majority of or waking hours in a job, that job has to be one of two things: 1) a job we find enough fulfillment in to justify a lower income or 2) a job we find enough income in to justify a lower fulfillment. Actually, it isn't so much 'either-or' as it is a range of 'low-fulfillment/high pay' to 'high-fulfillment/low pay.'

Remember, time is our most precious possession. How we spend our time matters more than anything, because it is finite and irretrievable. Therefore, we may be willing to work a job we enjoy and yet earn less money because our time during work is pleasant so our time after work doesn't have to compensate. On the other hand, we may be willing to work a job we hate for high pay so that we can have more freedom in our time after work. Like anything, it is a trade-off.

Of course--there are those of us who will work 'low-fulillment/low pay' jobs and those of us who will work 'high-fulfillment/high pay' jobs. The extent to which we are able to demand either higher fulfillment or higher pay is contingent upon our intellectual capital--how much relevant, productive knowledge we have to apply to our work. The ideal, of course, is to maximize fulfillment and income. For most of us, however, there isn't a profitable job for what we find most fulfilling, so we have to compromise on something. What is the meaning of work? It is different for each of us. It has precisely as much meaning as we attribute to it.