What Are You Working Towards?
Life at Work: Part 1
Are you going to work today? How do you think about your work? Would you say that you’re holding down a job, or are you building a career?
People hold down jobs because they need income. When my children were in college pursuing professional training, all three worked at retail jobs in the summer to earn money for the coming school year. Those jobs were solely a means to a near-term end. All of us have periods of life where work plays this role.
But while we can state the purpose of a job clearly, the purpose of a career seems less clear-cut. Maybe that’s because people display many different purposes in pursuing their careers. Some people seek wealth; others power; still others seek prominence, knowledge, or interesting activity.
The common element in these different purposes is continuity. To pursue a career is to consciously shape one’s experiences toward a desired result. Certainly, people desire many kinds of things, and it makes sense that their purposes vary accordingly.
But what if we phrase the question differently: What ought to be the purpose of a career?
Let me suggest a possible answer: The purpose of a career ought to be to fulfill your potential for good – creating good outcomes and outputs that contribute to the good of others.
When we think of fulfilling potential, we need to recognize that potential takes different forms in all of us. Some achieve good by deploying talents in specific types of work – they are programmers, machinists, writers, etc. Leaders achieve good through influence, which looks very different as we see it modeled by different kinds of leaders. Some have charisma and influence others by their presence; others quietly wield influence through the power of their ideas. And some, whether in leadership roles or not, achieve good primarily through serving others.
Furthermore, people have different levels of potential. Some have talents that can raise them to prominence; others do not. Outcompeting others is a poor guide to happiness or usefulness, since it may be easy or impossible, depending on one’s potential.
Our focus, then, needs to be on fulfilling our own potential, a standard that has no reference to anyone else’s performance.
What about the second half of the formula – what does it mean to produce good?
The central questions in ethical thinking are “What do we mean by ‘good’?” and “How do we bring about good?”
Societies agree for the most part on a minimum standard of the good – that’s what they embody into law. But merely staying within the bounds of the law isn’t a very high standard.
Ultimately good is defined by each person. This might imply that all notions of the good are equally valid. I beg to disagree. To take an extreme example, no one would argue that a terrorist planning a truck bombing is working toward the good just as effectively as someone working to make the world a better place by providing needed services or raising a well-adjusted child. We might not agree on every detail of how we define good, but all of us would agree that some forms of good are higher and better than others.
And the central task of maturity is to grow in one’s conception of the good. After all, for an infant, the good is epitomized by a full stomach and a dry diaper. As we grow, we see there’s more to life than that.
The purpose of a career ought to be to fulfill your potential for good
A mature vision of the good is complete. It wisely balances bringing good to ourselves, our families, and other people, to both present and future generations.
If pursuing a career means consciously shaping your experiences to achieve a desired result, are you clear in your own mind about the results you’re working towards? Could you state it in a clear sentence?
And if you’re clear about the results you’re seeking, are you proud of them? Do your goals reflect a mature vision of the good? If you’re pursuing nothing but your own selfish ends, I hope you’ll be honest with yourself.
More than once in this column, I’ve shared the way that J.B Phillips translated Philippians 1:9-11. Paul is writing to a fellowship of believers whose love and support have helped sustain him. He tells them, “You are very dear to me,” thanks them for their support, and then writes these words:
My prayer for you is that you may have still more love – a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight. I want you to be able always to recognize the highest and the best, and to live sincere and blameless lives until the day of Christ. I want to see your lives full of true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise and glory of God.
The highest and the best – that’s what we should pursue, in our work as in every other dimension of life. This has nothing to do with the prominence or scale of our work. My daughter Park is a fourth grade reading teacher. She is an exceptional teacher, achieving exceptional results in an impoverished school district with very low levels of academic achievement. As I pray for her, I often think that, fundamental as reading skills are to a child’s future, she may be the best opportunity some of these children will ever have to aspire to a better life. Her work is deeply meaningful to her; she is living a life of love in a powerful way, though it doesn’t always feel that way to her as she goes through difficult days and seasons. That also is true of life at work. Feelings will take us up and down, so we need to keep our eyes on the goal, maintaining our motivation as we remind ourselves what we are working towards.
Over the next few weeks, I want to explore other aspects of life at work. Most of us will spend more time at work than any other waking activity; investing our work lives wisely is foundational for a life well spent. Many of us underestimate its impact. I want to share some things I’ve learned over a lifetime that has combined aspirations and mistakes.
This is so good. I used to get caught up in my career being tied to the title I held. Would my career only matter if I somewhat moved up the org chart? After my father retired, I realized that his career was not measured in his title. No one cared what title he held. His impact was measured by the way he served those around him, the ways that he made the world a better place for coworkers and patients.
That helped me to have a different measure in regards to my “worth at work.” Am I having a positive impact in the people God has placed in my life? Am I contributing positively, adding value while also loving those I serve? When I’m long gone, people won’t remember or care if I held lofty titles. But my hope is that they look at my career, they’ll instead see a net positive in how I served others, whoever those individuals may be.
Thank you for your suggestions towards potential fulfillment as we work towards our various goals. Although I am retired, this message can be used in our daily living patterns. The beauty of these messages sent by IIII and you, are that they reach out to so many of us in many different ways.