What is Your Ideal Job?

Yes, yes, we all want to be millionaires and not have to work, but the fact of the matter is that is only likely for a very, very small percentage of people. For the rest of us working stiffs, we have to be more realistic.

So what is your ideal job? I think this is a deceptively simple question.

I have flopped around on this question often enough in my life, starting my first career attempt as creative writer and professor. I longed for the college professorial life through a graduate degree; for awhile after completing that degree, I still wanted to teach but my prospects were zero because I had no teaching experience. So I turned to other avenues, specifically technical writing for a software development company, which I found more interesting than I anticipated.

Recently Barb has begun teaching at Hudson Valley Community College. Five sections of composition per semester. She works hard. Her first year brought sixty hour weeks, many many 2a.m. evenings grading papers. I never realized how much work it was. Seeing this and knowing what she makes doing it, I began to be less inclined to be a college professor. However, she certainly enjoyed the summer—as the old saying goes: three reasons to be a college professor: June, July, August.

But seeing this told me something about myself and it's the first step for me to answer the question.

Money.

I don't think there is a job that I would do for little or nothing. Really, it's about money first and foremost. I think this comes from being cash poor my entire life. I don't believe I have ever really felt financially secure. I have worked since I was fourteen, picking fruits and vegetables for local farmers, stocking shelves for the local grocery store, running food at the school cafeteria, running papers and selling advertising for the local paper. That got me through my education, albeit loaded in student loan debt.

I feel today as though I have reached a kind of benchmark. I have made enough money in the past sixteen years of my professional (post education) career to reach a near debt free state. Other than bills (electric, heat, garbage, food, phone, cable, etc.) and miscellaneous spending, my only debt is a mortgage (I'll grant you a large one that I'll be paying until I'm 70). But I am otherwise debt free; to boot, I have everything I want. I actually ask for nothing for my birthday and for Christmas.

This is a peculiar place to be. I have never been here before, ever in my life. It's not to say that I'm rich (rest assured I'm not); it's not to say that I couldn't do something with more money (could you spend a million dollars in a day? YES!). It's to say that there is a fulcrum on which are balanced our decision-making motivations. For most people, like me, those motivations are financial gain/security and personal desire. My personal life experience has heretofore tipped that balance to favor financial gain/security over personal desire. I don't feel guilty or ashamed of this as I believe most people fall in here, and I'm no doubt in good company.

I feel, however, that I have just edged over that tipping point. I feel I can now make decisions based more on personal desire than on financial gain/security. It's not to say that I want to go into financial ruin; I need to be responsible. But it is to say that I have successfully achieved financial security such that with reasonable responsibility I should be able to do what I like.

This is what makes the question so difficult. We spend so much of our lives making decisions based on financial gain/security that we forget, no doubt in some cases never learn, how to make decisions based on personal desire. So when asked questions that point to this issue, such as this one, we kind of shuffle our feet and scratch our heads, and what really is happening inside our brains is we're saying "what the heck does that mean?" More often than not we answer as the first point: it has to pay me a LOT of money.

I am considering pursuing a job that would pay me 20% less than I currently make. This would challenge our current spending habits, but I think I would like the job more. The funny thing is, I have been so long looking at the numbers that I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I would in fact like the job more. A loud voice in my head (the financial gain/security guy) keeps shouting MONEY MONEY MONEY and it's hard to think over his noise.

The whole situation has forced me further into the self analysis that I've been in since leaving my last employer. What is it that I really want? It's kind of funny because my first answer is not surprising, but is another telling piece to my answer: more money less work.

This is the real factor: less work.

I want more time off. More than that, I want more freedom to choose the amount and timing of my free time. Ideally, I want to be out from under the oppression of my time off being governed and controlled by an employer. I increasingly see this as no different than a variant of indentured servitude if not outright ownership (read: slavery).

Try this on for size: ask your employer if you can purchase at your rate of pay (or, given the cost of benefits and facilities ... oh, say 1.5x your rate of pay) one additional week of vacation time. So if you make $1,000 per week, go to them and say "I'll take $1,500 off my salary if you give me one additional week of vacation per year" and I'll bet you that week's salary that nine out of ten (if not more) employers answer NO.

I cannot tell you how much I have come to resent this answer; the rules of simple barter would conclude that because they are not willing to pay you back at the equal rate, that you are in fact worth more than they are paying you. Yet which would you prefer to have?

The ideal for me so far is this: maintain the financial status I have achieved but increase (dare I say dramatically) the freedom to choose the amount and timing of my free time. I want my freedom!

So how likely is this. (Note the rhetorical nature of that last sentence; my version of a guffawing Ha!)

I suppose consulting work may come with some increased degree of this freedom. I think some small business owners, too, may possibly have it. In either case it's not guaranteed—quite possibly they carry less freedom, not to mention their risks. But there are examples out there to prove the point. For example, my brother Kevin. He is a contractor and small business owner who works 4 day weeks all summer long (his busy time) and has slow downs in the winter. He owns two houses, one of them on the water of the St. Lawrence Seaway (1,000 islands).

That's what I'd like: a four day workweek; three day weekends all year around. No compromise to my financial earnings or other opportunities for time off (holidays, vacation accrual, etc.). Unlike the unrestrained nature of the objective in general and as expressed a few paragraphs up, I think this objective is possible, realistic even. Why certainly I am closer to that objective today as I work strictly a forty hour workweek than I was six months ago (or for the past sixteen years) as I worked forty-five to fifty (plus) hour weeks every week of the year. Being home by 5pm every day is almost as strange as the nature of the "ideal job" question itself. I almost feel guilty, can you believe that!?

Still, even this is a compromise and not true achievement of the objective: more money less work. So what is more time off worth? If I am unable to attain, oh let's say, four day workweek, ten paid holidays, and forty days of vacation per year (that's eight weeks) while maintaining my current income, then what can I attain? Being in my current financial situation, having tipped just over to the personal desire side on that lever, I can reasonably conclude that I may compromise financial gain/security in favor of personal desire.

Back to the pursuit of a job that would pay 20% less. It would have to provide something in the personal gain category. This job, while not offering a four day workweek, could come closer even than I am today. That's a plus. Over time, I could earn considerable time off, more than most employers. Another plus. I would not have the total freedom that I seek, but it would be a step in the right direction, albeit with limitations. Is it enough to cover the financial loss? Quite possibly. I think so.

It is in the realm of reasonable possibility. This makes it a viable candidate, although I'd call it roughly an even balance, but certainly tipping to the personal desire side. It's not a no-brainer, and obviously I don't want to tip the scale so far that I end up in financial ruin!

What else might tip the scale?

There are other factors in the mix. The work environment, for example; I don't want to work where I am devalued or despised, that would certainly tip the scale back to the financial side (couldn't pay me enough to tolerate that). As a factor, however, I believe that while most professional environments have an element of this (people are people after all) it is only in a small set of cases where this is the predominant characteristic. It's a factor, but one which only the extreme needs to be watched out for.

This leaves the work itself. It's strange that in my list of priorities for the ideal job that the actual work itself comes so far down the list. This is probably very telling of who I am! I am not a "geologist" or a "programmer" or a "professor". Back to Identity Chapters (an earlier post). The fact of the matter is, I like a wide range of things, tasks, activities. I like change, too. I'm a fair bit of a generalist, rather eclectic, favoring not a specific profession but specific types or characteristics of work. I like a fast pace. I like juggling many things. I like seeing the results of my contribution. I like analyzing complex problems. What motivates me—probably no surprise here—is praise, recognition, and reward for my contribution.

Because I don't see myself as an "x", but rather a set of skills applicable to "x" and "y" and "z", this opens a lot of opportunities.

My current position enables me to exercise some key skills I bring to the table. I'm doing business analyst work (which I really like), project management (which I really like), client management (which is new to me and I am enjoying), and technical writing (which is good enough). And I enjoy the days when the client points out how satisfied they are with my contribution!

But something surprised me in this recent work, a motivator I did not know was there. I am defining requirements, and have an opportunity to oversee the project, for an electronic system that would, in some way, help New York State, and even the United States generally, protect itself from catastrophes related to bio-terrorism or pandemics.

WOW!

Quite frankly, I feel patriotic! I don't know that I've ever felt that way before. It's pretty awesome to think that I could contribute meaningfully to such an endeavor! This makes all of my previous position pale in comparison. In those positions I was challenged, was kept busy and maintained a fast pace, and I was rewarded and praised for my contribution. But it was just... blah. Interesting product in all cases (MapInfo more interesting that BRS; BRS more interesting than Commsoft), but in the end just blah. Really, what difference to the world are any of those products making? I don't mean to be disparaging, and they are making a difference, but it's not on the scale of some other things. I can go from one to the next to the next rather effortlessly ad infinitum and feel the same in each case, but in the end honestly not feel like I have made one damn bit of difference in the world.

This could be the scale tipper: meaningful contribution.

I think I have it now. The answer, that is, to the question where we started. If you're still reading.

My ideal job is one which improves my financial standing while affording me complete freedom and enables me to exercises my best skills for which I am greatly praised and recognized.

OK, I admit that's a tall order. But it is, after all, an ideal.

My realistically ideal job is any position which minimally compromises my financial standing, affords maximum freedom, includes work tasks that exercise my best skills, is conducted in an environment which is respectful, results in ample praise and recognition for my contribution, and is part of a meaningful endeavor.

The rest are details.

Are you still reading? Get back to work, you slacker! ;)