The Dichotomy of Work

What you want to do vs. What you want to tell others you do

 
A couple of weeks ago, I came across a really interesting career advice article from Derek Thompson (linked below). There are few writers who continue to produce banger after banger, and Derek is one of them. When he writes something, I read it.

Most career advice posts lie somewhere between cringe and cliché. This one isn’t most career advice posts. Thompson gave five excellent pieces of career advice, but point three really stood out:

Don’t do the job you want to tell other people you do. Do the job you want to do.

A quote from his article:

Many years ago, I was thinking about taking a job at another company with a fancy-sounding title that belied the drudgery of the underlying work. (By the way, beware this inverse relationship, as sometimes the most attractive titles are reserved for the most soul-destroying labor.)

I told my colleague James Fallows, then a writer at The Atlantic, how excited I was to tell people at parties about this new job title that I would soon carry around, like a boutonniere on my lapel. “Don’t do the job you want to tell people you do,” he said. “Do the job you want to do.” Well, damn, I replied. And that was that. I turned down the position about five minutes later.

Derek Thompson

The dichotomy of work: the job you want to tell other people you do vs. the job that you want to do.

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Πηγή: youngmoney.co