Do I Have A Job, A Career or A Vocation?

The topic that was discussed during Session 3 of the Lasallian Business Leadership class was Family and Work-Life Harmony. The item that intrigued me the most was the difference between a job, career and vocation as these three words are often used interchangeably and they seem to be at first glance to be similar to each other but are not.

At youthdirections.com, the author differentiated the three by the following definitions: “A job is something short-term that we do for the money, a career is something with long-term goals for which we make money, a vocation/calling is similar to career that earns us not only money but also gives up deep satisfaction, fulfilment and happiness.” The author seems to say that financial and emotional returns are the qualities that transitions from a job towards a vocation.

The article “Finding Your Calling” at artofmanliness.com also makes the distinction that “a job is simply a means to an end: a paycheck, a careerist derives meaning not from the nature of the work itself but the gratification from advancing through the ranks, and a vocation is work you do for its own sake; the rewards of wages are peripheral to getting to use one’s passion.”

Both articles seem to stress that at the lowest level, a job is all about the money. You report in the morning, do the work that you were hired to do, and then at the end of the day, you punch. Day in. Day out. Like the song by Dolly Parton, “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living…It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.” The drudgery of a job is emphasized; Karl Marx must be rolling in his grave with the validation of his philosophy.

At the next level is a career. Work as career is defined by the psychological rewards of creativity and autonomy. A career is a job which includes money plus satisfaction.

At the highest level is a vocation. It is revealing that vocation is derived from the Latin word “vocare” meaning “to call.” A vocation is something that you were meant to do.

So to answer the question, do I have a Job, a Career or a Vocation? Using the above definitions, I am somewhere between a career and a vocation. As a public servant, this is reinforced by the fact that we have to pass the Career Service Examinations of the Civil Service Commission. It is also a vocation considering that what we do has an impact not only for ourselves but also for the rest of the country, and that is what our firm has been successfully achieving for the last 45 years. Our vocation is not only good, but great work.

In closing, I quote Steve Jobs who said this inspirational statement about the nature of work, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”