A close friend was asking me about his career. He said he felt that he was doing way too many things and that perhaps he should just do one thing really well instead. I asked him if he likes all the things that he was doing currently. His answer was a YES. I shared with him that he would somehow need to make it work. The reason is simple. In the very near future, if our job description is the exact same one as the one when we started our work many years ago, get ready to be retrenched.
The reason? There is already someone in another faraway country who is learning today and is eager to do what we are currently doing for lesser pay. Yea, we can always ridicule the Ringgit versus stronger currencies but frankly if we have same talent pool as some other advanced nations, their professionals would lose their jobs instead. Just look at the mushrooming of Business Process Outsourcing centres which is now a common feature in Malaysia today. These jobs were once in more ‘expensive’ countries.
Then, I read about an article written by contributors to Forbes. ‘3 reasons you need to either love your job or lose it.’ The writer shared three things. If we do not love our job, we would usually be stressed by it. A few examples were given and they make sense too. Secondly, if we do not like our job, the accomplishments are harder to come by and in the end, we usually regret because we did not do the best we could, simply because we did not like our job! (Well, we did apply for it in the beginning…).
Third, when we do not like our job, it usually meant we are not performing and this will really affect our future potential. Seriously, if we do not have any achievements, the next job is not going to pay us a higher pay. Makes perfect sense. The article concluded by saying that we should produce great work. Well, every time we produce great work, we are doing better. In other words, it is harder for people to learn what we do. If they could not do what we do, then lower pay matters little.
I could still remember how desperate I was to look for a job in July 1998. I was a fresh graduate and had zero working experience. There were just two pages of job advertisements in newspapers and even JobStreet was only starting. Somehow I got myself a sales job. Well, my Japanese General Manager told me this. ‘As long as you do well, I will promote you.’ I did really well.
It made me realise that interest can be built when we really love our job. Achievements follow once we love our job and work hard for it. Well, sales jobs pay REALLY WELL too. Think about it. Today, when retrenchments happen, it is always those doing the same thing day in and day out for the past few years. If we continue to build our skills (plus invest our money well lah), then I think we should do just fine. By the way, only by doing extremely well that we will keep earning higher pay. Love our job, else get ready to lose it.
written on 11 Nov 2017
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