Job Titles vs Job Descriptions

If you're Indian, Asian, and according to some of my podcast guests, Jewish, someone in your life will probably recommend that you become a doctor when you think about possible careers. And some people consider it as an option because of the prestige, money, and status that comes with becoming a doctor.

But what they don't consider is the actual work involved. They focus on the job title but ignore the job description.

The only reason I was ever interested in medicine was that all the doctors I knew lived in big houses, drove a Mercedes, and my mother's boss had season tickets to Houston Rockets. And as any good doctor will tell you, those are terrible reasons to become one.

When I was in high school, I knew I wasn't cut out for medicine. Like any good Indian mother, when I told mine that I get sick all the time and hate hospitals, she said, "You'll develop immunity." But I think deep down she knew I would never be a doctor.

Someone told my sister, who is a doctor, that being an anesthesiologist is like being a pilot. The most exciting part is the takeoff and the landing.

We see the end result of what people accomplish, but we don't see the work that goes behind it. We focus more on the job title than the job description.

If you want to be a doctor, you have to be honest with yourself about whether you really want to spend 10 years in school, work countless weekends and holidays, and spend all your time in a hospital. You have to want the job description more than the title.

A friend at my Crossfit gym jokingly called me Hank Moody. This is a character on the show "Californication" ( TV ) who happens to be a writer. He drives a Porsche, gets drunk every night, and wakes up with a beautiful woman in his bed.

Being a writer isn't nearly as interesting. The above job description is what Anne Lamott would call a fantasy of the uninitiated.

If you think you want to be a writer, ask yourself if you want to sit in a silent room and resist the temptation to throw your laptop against the wall until you write something worth reading that nobody gives a shit about. That's the job description that comes with the job title "writer."

Are you really up for that?

If you want to be a banker or a consultant at a prestigious investment bank or a lawyer at a prestigious firm, you need to be honest with yourself about whether you want to work 70-hour weeks, cracking spreadsheets and doing paperwork until your head explodes. These jobs are much more exciting on TV than in real life.

If you focus on the job title but overlook the description, you're more likely to end up at a job you hate.