Do you have to love your job?

Taken from The Jason Rantz Show on KIRO Radio.

Do you have to actually love what you’re doing to do well at work?

The topic came up this week on Jezebel. Contributor Tracey Moore wrote:

It’s not hard to understand why there’s a premium on positive energy. Enthusiasm is infectious, and a passionate worker is presumed to be a more productive one. This may be true in some cases, and love of the game may be necessary for certain positions—but we also all probably know from experience that you can get many a job done without caring in the slightest about the company you’re doing it for, or even the job itself.

For me, the problem here is how people interchange the word job with career. I don’t think you have to actually love your job in order to do well. But I do think you need to love your career in order to do well.

That’s basically a function of what both of things actually serve to accomplish. A job is not a career. A job is temporary. It’s meant to get you skills to then leverage to find a better, higher paying job. A job is what you do to prepare yourself for a career.

A retail clerk, for example, that’s not a career. It’s not meant to be. You’re not meant to make a living off of that for the rest of your life. It’s not meant to put your kids through college. It’s not meant to be an especially meaningful job, or a satisfying job. That is not the purpose that job serves. A retail clerk is a job. Now managing the store, that is a career.

But you need jobs to get to that career. Jobs can be boring. But careers absolutely 100 percent must be exciting for you because careers are not temporary. A career is what you do for a living. A career is what you do for a very long time, short of you being fired or moving onto a different position in the same field.

When I started my first job in radio as a call screener, that was a job. I did that particular job to get my foot in the door. I wanted to get onto a career path. But the start of that path was a job. What came after, the producing, the program directing, the hosting, that is the career. You know you’re in a career when you’re making a decent salary, when you’re doing something that is intended to be permanent.

And you know it’s permanent is when you actually enjoy what you do because when you don’t enjoy what you actually do, you won’t do it well. If you don’t do it well, then it’s no longer permanent because you’re going to get fired.

It won’t be hard to know when you’re working a job versus a career. When you find yourself in a career, at some point you look at what you’re doing and you say I don’t have any intention of going anywhere, I really enjoy what I’m doing. You’re getting satisfaction not just in the work, but outside of work as well. You’re able to pay the rent. You’re able to go to the movies or to a ball game. When you find this kind of satisfaction, you’re in a career rather than a job, and it’s easier to love what you’re doing.

Taken from The Jason Rantz Show on KIRO Radio.