Job. Career. Calling. Which Do You Choose?

Posted On February 11, 2022

After nearly twenty-one years of being an official adult, I’ve lost sight and forgotten many times the feeling one has when finally deciding upon (or settling on) a profession, be it a job, career, or calling.

I didn’t go to college, so I never had the sort of free-range buffer of growing into adulthood that many who attend four-year universities experience, but I did join the Navy, which parallels the teen to adult buffer college affords. Joining the military bought me critical time before needing to make that painstaking decision of choosing an occupation.

My time in the Navy is like a bottle of good wine. The memories of that time period are getting better with age. I never saw myself as a “Lifer” in the Navy. Life at sea just wasn’t for me. The Navy was a gig. I knew it then. A chance to see the world on someone else’s dime. I knew I would be getting out in the very near future.

The Navy was just a job.

When I turned 22, I joined the carpenters union. I liked the work immediately. At first, it was a filler job till the college semester started. But like most stories of careers in construction, a few months earning good money is hard to let go of. I was working around guys who were raising families and owned homes plying this trade. And my dad was a carpenter, he raised me and my brothers with union money and ended up doing pretty well for himself in management later on. Being a union carpenter felt grown up enough so I stuck with it.

The knowledge of having finally found a grown person’s job I could do for the rest of my life felt great. It was exciting.

So I fell into my career more than I would say chose one. It wasn’t a dream of mine to be a carpenter, but it was logical and had very high earning potential for a guy with no college degree.

There was a journeyman I used to get paired up with when I was an apprentice who had no shame in admitting he would blame any fuck ups on me. When I asked why he would blame me for his mistakes, this is what he’d say:

“Kid,” he would tell me, “this is my career. It’s just a job for you. That’s why. Now quit chatting and get back to work.”

A job and a career?

Are they really all that different?

Can one person do the exact same thing as someone else for a living, yet for one it’s a job and the other a career?

Yes. It’s all a mindset. But there’s even more than choosing between a job and a career. What if I said there was a third option.

I stumbled recently upon the work of Amy Wrzesniewski after a conversation I had with my tattoo artist. She’s a professor at the Yale School of Management and she’s written some interesting things about the psychology of work. More specifically I found her research on Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work to hit home hard. I’ve written recently about how my view of work has changed and it fits right in with this.

This research paper describes and provides evidence that all people see their work in one of three categories.

Instead of paraphrasing, I’ll take the following straight from the 1997 study.

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Job
Mr. A works primarily to earn enough money to support his life outside of his job. If he
was financially secure, he would no longer continue with his current line of work, but
would really rather do something else instead. Mr. A’s job is basically a necessity of life,
a lot like breathing or sleeping. He often wishes the time would pass more quickly at
work. He greatly anticipates weekends and vacations. If Mr. A lived his life over again, he
probably would not go into the same line of work. He would not encourage his friends and
children to enter his line of work. Mr. A is very eager to retire.
Career
Mr. B basically enjoys his work, but does not expect to be in his current job five years
from now. Instead, he plans to move on to a better, higher level job. He has several goals
for his future pertaining to the positions he would eventually like to hold. Sometimes his
work seems a waste of time, but he knows that he must do sufficiently well in his current
position in order to move on. Mr. B can’t wait to get a promotion. For him, a promotion
means recognition of his good work, and is a sign of his success in competition with his
coworkers.
Calling
Mr. C’s work is one of the most important parts of his life. He is very pleased that he is
in this line of work. Because what he does for a living is a vital part of who he is, it is
one of the first things he tells people about himself. He tends to take his work home with
him and on vacations, too. The majority of his friends are from his place of employment,
and he belongs to several organizations and clubs relating to his work. Mr. C feels good
about his work because he loves it, and because he thinks it makes the world a better
place. He would encourage his friends and children to enter his line of work. Mr. C would
be pretty upset if he were forced to stop working, and he is not particularly looking for-
ward to retirement

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I was Mr. B from the time I was 22 to 36 years old. That was the life span of my “career”.

Now I’m Mr. A. I became Mr. A in 2020.

I have a Job. I like my job, but I’ve come to realize I don’t want a Career.

Now that I’ve read this paper and come to realize the so-called categories of employment mindset, wanting a career would be knowingly wanting something some organization controls and owns. With a Career, I could only ever follow the path laid out by the corporation. I could only ever play by their rules, which they have the power to change at any time.

To put it simply there is no control for the individual when one has a career.

There’s no attachment to work, or a title, or a company if you simply have a Job.

The transition from Mr. B to Mr. A was quite dramatic for me.

I can narrow down the specific event that changed it all and it’s the start of the pandemic. I’ve written about this event a few times, and you can check it out here and here.

Up until this inflection point I enjoyed my career job. I felt I was on the “career path”. I was once a very driven and enthusiastic pusher of the company line till my paradigm shifted. It was a perfect storm of working through the early pandemic and discovering the concept of FIRE through Mad Fientist’s podcasts.

I wonder how many people who are pursuing FIRE are in the occupational mindset camp of Calling or Career? It’s easy to see how someone with a Job can be willing to give it all up for the pursuit of something more. I imagine those who are working with a Career mindset are too blinded to want to ever quit, and those with an occupational Calling would go insane without their work.

Here’s another description of Calling from the research paper.

Finally, people with Callings find that their work is inseparable from their life. A person with a Calling
works not for financial gain or Career advancement, but instead for the ful-
fillment that doing the work brings to the individual.

-Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work

I would love that. I would love to do something so fulfilling that money isn’t in the equation. That’s how I feel about writing, being a dad, and traveling. I could never give any of those things up.

How can someone with a Calling want to pursue FIRE? I don’t think it’s possible.

I’ll be honest and say I envy these people who have a so-called Calling as W-2 employment. Those who’ve landed their dream jobs and never want to retire.

Just a Career…

A few words on the Career category.

So I’ve had this post sitting on the low burner for quite some time. Originally I had a write-up disparaging the Career category. I made mention of how lucky I was to see the light and find FIRE and all that. Even though, for the longest time, I was indeed a member of this camp. I still am at times. I flirt with the power and accomplishment that comes with “getting things done”. It’s easy to get lost in this mindset.

And there’s nothing wrong with falling into this category. The world needs people to continue working and making more money. Just like those of us in the FIRE camp need consumers and overspenders to support the economy we have gamed, the economy needs people to be absorbed in their careers.

And after all, isn’t it about being and feeling content with a day’s output?

It feels good to succeed at something and be rewarded. The Career category fills this void for people. Hell, it used to fill it for me. If this is your route, we’ll then, a tip of the cap.

Now more from the research paper on the Career category…

A Career, as represented in this study, focuses on promotion and associated change in the
kind of work performed. Furthermore, the concern with advancement that
seems to mark a Career does not appear to confer much advantage over a
Job in the various well-being variables we assessed….

…people who have Careers have a deeper personal investment in their work and mark their achieve-
ments not only through monetary gain, but through advancement within the
occupational structure. This advancement often brings higher social stand-
ing, increased power within the scope of one’s occupation, and higher self-
esteem for the worker..

-Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work

I can see the allure of being successful in the “Career” category. But it’s not for me anymore. I’m in the search of my Calling, or to put it better, I want to devote more time to what my Calling is: Writing. Being a family man. And traveling to new places.

Mindset

The most compelling part of all this for me is that these categories are all a state of mind.

There’s not one occupation that is only a Career, Job, or Calling, though one might argue that the arts or teaching could be labeled a Calling.

In the study, the researchers in one assessment, asked only “administrative assistants” to identify with one of the three categories, and some administrative assistants felt they had Jobs, and others Careers, and for some, this was their Calling.

Those with a Calling also had higher levels of well-being than those with Jobs or Careers.

Back to my own search for dedicating my time to a Calling. This might be why I’m hot and heavy for Financial Independence so I can quit my “Job” to spend my time honing my Calling in life. This probably goes back to the overkilled topic of FI without the RE part. For me, FIRE isn’t really retiring to the golf course or rocking chair but a transition into searching for and pursuing that Calling…whatever that might be. Knowing that there’s a category I fall into about the way I view work actually helps me along the way to eventual FI, because I realize now, through academic research, that my old salty journeyman was right after all; I don’t have a career, I just have a job. And I’m damned proud of that.

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So what camp are you in? If you have/had a Calling as a profession and chose to FIRE, I’d love to hear about it too.

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