The CareerPlanner Blog

How Do You Know When You Are Doing The Wrong Kind of Work?

Today I had a prime example of watching a person who was forced to do the wrong kind of work.

And it was me.

I normally love the work I do, but for the last few days I have been doing book keeping and accounting in an effort get ready for our tax prep guy.

After a few hours of typing numbers into Quicken / QuickBooks and struggling to balance accounts and get all the expenses correctly categorized, I was a wreck. I was repeatedly cursing the software. 

I was grouchy and cranky (more so than usual) and my dog had even run to the other end of the house.

I was pessimistic and the whole world looked bleak. 

So when I took a break to chill a bit, I realized that this is what it is like when a person is forced to do work that they are not well suited to.

I've taken our Career Interest Test and our new Personality Test several times and they both say that I should avoid repetitive, highly detailed work, like accounting and book keeping.

The Personality Test says I am an "INTJ," and if you want to destroy an INTJ at work, keep them away from creative work for several days.  Force them to do repetitive, detailed work. 

Wow. I knew I hated the book keeping, but I always associated it with taxes and nobody likes taxes.  Now I know better.  Its the very type of work I was born to avoid and it is driving me up the wall.  Plus it's driving my dog to hide in the guest bedroom.

So I wonder what it must be like for someone who has a job where they have to do a lot of work that they are not well suited to?

What if you needed to earn a living up until you are 90 years old?

 I recently read where a person who is 40 years old today will easily live long enough to reach a time when medical technology has advanced far enough that one's life can be extended indefinitely.

Sound far fetched? - see Ray Hammond's The World in 2030.  Hammond is a futurist who was commissioned by the plastics industry to identify long term trends that they could capitalize on. 

Futurists forecast that by 2025 (only 16 years from now), medical technology will offer two breakthrough technologies that will extend our lives, but they will be very expensive and only those with a good income need apply.

These two breakthroughs will be rejuvenation treatments and replacement organs grown from your own DNA. With those, they say, a 40 year old person today can easily live past 120.

In the near future there will be two classes of people.  Those that can afford quality rejuv and those that can't.  Don't believe me?  Many of the rich and famous today are already taking Human Growth Hormone (HGH) to give them more energy, to help them heal faster, and to be a bit more perky.

So what does this mean for your career?

It means that you had better have a good source of income that will still be working for you when you are 80, 90 or 120 years old.  Am I joking?  Sorry no.  Wish I was.

Here is the big picture when it comes to careers.  Let say you are 40 today.  Remember how much you experienced in your first 20 years, from birth to when you could legally drink. You did a lot.  You got educated. You held your first job. You learned to drive. You fell in love... You may have spent time and effort getting trained or educated for your first career.  You accomplished a lot.

Now remember how much you experienced from when you were 21 to 40. This is lifetime #2.  You got married, maybe had kids, built a career, took nice vacations...

Now picture that every 20 years is a different lifetime or a different life segment. 

Thus you have at least two more 20 year life segments ahead of you. Better plan for them.

If medical technology comes through, you might easily live to 120.  That would be four more full life segments. Holy cow Batman, that's a long time.  My savings plan might run out of money.

In the old days, people planned to retire when they hit 63 and then play golf or fish until they died.  For a source of income they counted on:

• a company pension plan
• a military service pension
• a civil servant pension
• selling their home
• social security
• a stock market portfolio
• rental property

Well, today we can see that most of these except maybe the rental income, are in trouble.

So, if you are 40 today, you need to plan to earn income for a very long life, possibly until you are 120.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have already become wealthy, you have some work to do.

But with all this time ahead of you, it may make sense to start investing in your next career.

If you are 40, you may have thought, heck I'm going to retire at 63, why would I take the time to learn new skills, develop new talents.   I only have 23 years of work left.  Wrong.

Think again.

Maybe you have more time than you thought...