THE DIFFICULTY OF GIVING UP A JOB WITH SOCIETAL VALUE

Here is a painful truth for most people, illustrated with this simple little triangle. Look at the three corners. They represent: a job that gives social value, worth to others and altruistic satisfaction; a career that brings enough money for a comfortable life for you and your significant others, now and in the future; and the third corner represents having free time to spend with your loved ones, doing hobbies and relaxing from the stress of work.

Now comes the painful truth. Choose a line, linking two corners, that represents your career. Just one line.

The hard fact for most people is that we can place ourselves on one line, linking two corners, but achieving the holy trinity of money, free time and societal value from the work we did is an impossible dream for most.

I want it all. We all want it all. And the modern world has told us over and over again that we can have it all. But, like the sad fact of world we live in, perhaps only 1% of us can “have it all”. The other 99% are doomed to choosing one side of the triangle and learning to accept it for what it is.

My own career has followed this path over the last decade. I started teaching in 2004 and was a single man having fun in a new career. I was in my mid-twenties, didn’t have two coppers to rub together and didn’t care much about it anyway. The only important factor for me was that I was finally doing a job that provided clear and measurable value to others, which gave me positive feedback, and allowed me time off to explore a new country and enjoy my youth.

This hedonism lasted until about 2006 when I got married and started my own business. Suddenly money became a factor and I moved anti-clockwise around the triangle, sacrificing time for the pursuit of some material wealth to support myself and my quickly-expanding tribe. 8 years later, I am still there. I still teach and am humbled every day to see the value that my work brings to others. But the cruel reality is that working 15 hours per day, as well as putting in about 10 at weekends, means that free time is a purely hypothetical idea in my life. Over the last few years I have tried to make changes but reality bites back and it proves to be impossible to have enough free time to enjoy my young children growing up, pursue my own hobbies and do things to reduce my astronomical blood pressure and levels of stress.

So, the fact has to be faced - as it must be by all of us who do jobs that offer societal value during our careers – that one must make a straight priority choice and work out which two of the value I give to others, the money I need to support my family and the time I have for them and myself are most important.

For most people this is no choice at all, family comes first - and that means money and time. However, for those of us who have spent any considerable time doing a job that provides high societal value (things like teaching, childcare, nursing, working for the fire or police departments, working for a charity, etc.) that choice is one that, I believe, is a whole lot harder to make.

I’m not suggesting that other people do not see the societal value of the work they do. The manager of a mid-size firm can see the value that providing work gives to his employees; a supermarket worker may feel that a smile at the check-out counter for a sullen customer is a way of making the world a better place. But these are situations where societal value is inferred rather than being obvious.

It is a sad truth that so few of us can claim all three corners of the triangle at the same time. However, time is a gift and the average working life is something like 40 years, which means that we can switch from side to side during our working lives and even when we retire.

My father occupied the work-time side for many years, as he tried to secure his future and that of myself and my siblings. He got a lucky break with redundancies in the company, was able to retire early and now sits happily on the value-time line, spending his days working for a charity driving a bus for the elderly and disabled. Of course, he has the money in the bank but the lines describe our current circumstance and focus, they do not take the background information into account.

My suspicion is that most people start at the time-value line and move around the triangle anti-clockwise through their careers. Much like myself, when family comes along, they move to value-money, then they get tired and sacrifice value to wider society for time (and value) spent with their families. Then, if they are lucky, the aim is to retire and have the time-value situation that once existed in the days of youth before family came along.

I would therefore argue that it is prudent not to place societal value at the head of your priorities. It may seem selfish and even untrendy to focus on money and free time for yourself over the needs of others. However, one should remember that the faster you earn the money and the longer you can live without a stress-induced aneurysm, the faster you can get back to the position whereby you offer value to others whilst affording yourself the free time to live well. Giving to others does not have to be a life-long pursuit but it is a pursuit that you can return to in life.