If you are someone who graduated from university and stayed in the corporate world for at least a few years, you would be familiar with the idea of “finding purpose in your job”. Why is this a popular idea? The truth is that companies will benefit if most of its employees are motivated by “purposeful work”, and employees will be happier if they feel that their work is meaningful. No employee wants to feel stuck in a job they hate. Yet, “finding purpose” can be a risky mindset if you take your job too seriously and forget what your job truly is — a time for money transaction.

The truth about finding purpose in a job

The main purpose of a job is to pay your bills. Not everyone is able to work a job they like and find purpose within it, and frankly, that might be a good thing. 

It means that you do not fall into the trap of deriving your personal value and identity from any particular job. Treat a job as what it is – a job that pays your bills.

Jobs are transactions, not relationships

Make no mistake that when you work a job, you are getting paid by trading away hours of your time for money. This means that you are engaging in a transaction with your employer, i.e. your company. 

If you hear someone say “find purpose in your job”, consider who is spreading the message and why. Understand who is making the discourse and where it comes from. 

Usually, this statement comes from a few common sources:

• Corporations 
• Your boss or HR department
• Colleges/ Universities
• Career advisors
• Your peer group (who are trying to “find purpose” themselves)

Every company wants a dedicated employee who finds his job purposeful, so that they will put in the extra mile. The importance of finding purpose in a job is corporate rhetoric. 

Likewise, universities support the idea of purposeful work. This is because the point of tertiary education is to train people to become successful employees. Your bosses and career advisors may help you straighten out your career directions via mentoring or monthly check-ins, or conversing over a cup of coffee. Sometimes it is employees themselves who regurgitate the message of purpose. People need to feel that they are progressing, and that their jobs are meaningful. A survey of over 1,000 employees found that a staggering 70% define their purpose through their work.

The unfiltered truth is this: If you are an employee, you are only hired because you are underpaid and generating the organisation a profit. Otherwise, it makes no business sense to hire you. 

In other words, your value in a business (as an employee) is less than what you would be worth in the marketplace. As an employee, you are making the business much more money that you are paid.

It might take a minute to understand and digest this fact.

And “purpose” is a meaningless, overused buzzword. It is a nice terminology thrown into coffee chats and team meetings to keep employees happy, smiling, and motivated enough to work and keep operations going.

Understand that jobs are not relationships. Your company does not have your best interests at heart.

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg recently fired 900 employees over a Zoom call and cited “the market”, “efficiency”, and “performances” as reasons behind the layoffs, despite many within the company referring to the laid-off personnel as “family” and “alumni”. 

Generally, businesses will pay less for service – and undercut its employees – if they can get away with it (this happens all the time). The tough post-pandemic market is another excuse for companies to reduce salaries and bonuses.

A company may smile and put up a front to keep its employees happy, but they have the ultimate right to decide the fate of an employee.

Protect your value and worth (as an employee)

If a job gives you purpose, what are the likely consequences?

This may or may not lead you down a dangerous route. You may waste your time climbing a dangerous ladder.

You may unknowingly become a company man and destroy your worth. This is someone who is willing to go above and beyond for the company, essentially valuing the company as an indispensable part of his/her life. This person derives his value and worth from his/her role within the company.

In an economy as volatile as ever, this is a big mistake. At best, this offers a false sense of security. At worst, you risk your financial future.

It is for the best interest of a company to make employees in senior positions (who are earning a moderately high paycheck) redundant, in order to cut costs and replace them with younger workers, i.e. “new blood” who are paid much less but have all the potential to succeed.

Think about how your company would act if you were to drop dead one day at work. They would be upset for a brief period of time (1-7 days). Then, they would hire your replacement and move on with business as usual.

But every company wants a “company man” who shares the positive aspects of company culture on LinkedIn, because it is good for their bottom line. Just browse the platform and you will commonly see employees posting about corporate activities, their personal growth, and even how ‘lucky’ they are to be working for the company.

If you are blinded by purpose at your current job, you may destroy your market value. If you are attached to any particular company or project, these are ways which you can sabotage your market value:

• Limit the skills that you could learn by staying at one company
• Limit your network
• Miss out on opportunities to switch companies and boost your salary (You stay in a job longer than you should)
• Neglect other potential streams of income

You may try to improve your skills and network by putting in more hours. But by overworking, you are diminishing your value because your hourly rate is going down. Besides, the extra hours you give to a company could have been channelled towards a side hustle (a second stream of income). 

It is risky if your entire financial future is built upon climbing the ladder of your job. On the other hand, if you have purpose that transcends any one particular job, you do not need it to give you purpose.

Alternative ways to find purposeful work

In reality, many of us dislike our jobs or are just getting by. Often, we try to create “meaning” and “purpose” because we are stuck in a situation we can’t change. Fortunately, there are alternatives that are better than finding purpose within a job.

1. Find purpose by building transferable career skills

Instead of finding purpose in a job, a less bad alternative is to find purpose in a career. Still, you will be subject to volatile economic changes and how your company performs. Yet, there are two distinct ways why finding purpose in a career is better:

• You can build transferable skills in fields that are in demand
• You can follow the money in a performance-based career

Transferable skills are skills that are valued in the market, not just tied to your current position. You build transferable skills by entering fields that are in demand. 

According to Glassdoor, the job titles with the highest demand also have the highest salaries, found within specialised industries such as financial advisory, sales, nursing, and software development. Go into these (higher paying) fields and build transferable skills as part of your career tool belt. Also, this helps you to mitigate against the downsides of employment. If a company lays you off, you can always find another company to pay your bills, because you have high-income skills that are always in demand. 

Look for these skills, find purpose in these careers if you like – without getting attached to your company – and “future-proof” your income.

Find purpose in performance-based careers. These are different from jobs since you are earning money based on performance. Sales people across multiple industries like tech, advertising, insurance and real estate earn their income based on commissions. There is less of a salary “cap”, as they get more money by closing more clients. In these careers, you can improve your income regardless of whether you work five hours or five days.

2. Job hop

Job hopping is a better alternative to finding meaning within a company. People who switch jobs every 2+ years make about 50% more money over their lifetimes than those who stay at one company. 

This is because companies have guidelines on annual pay raises. Usually, the pay raise of an employee is not more than 2-3% of their salary (recessions give companies even more excuses to lower this amount). 

On the other hand, if you simply switch jobs, you immediately get to start off at a much higher baseline salary, instead of waiting to get promoted through the ranks over multiple years. This means that your salary increase can occur at a much higher percentage – 10%, 20%, sometimes even 30% or more.

If you are job hopping, you are essentially making progress for your own sake. This is purposeful as you are committed to your own progress – not attached to any particular company. 

Not surprisingly, someone who switches jobs every 1-2 years is often viewed as someone who keeps her skills sharpened, takes charge of her career, and can adapt to different varieties of tasks and workflows. (In contrast, someone who switches jobs less than every 6 months is viewed in a negative light.)

3. Pursue multiple streams of income

Creating multiple streams of income can be very rewarding. When you create multiple streams of income, you are breaking the reliance on your job to provide you with 100% of your bread and butter. Then, you will be far, far less reliant on your job for “purpose”.

What happens if you are not motivated to pursue multiple streams of income? The first step is to understand that money buys happiness. Happiness studies suggest that people who make at least $75,000 a year are much happier than the average person. They put up with less daily stress. 

Therefore, having multiple (small) streams of income not only mitigates against the downsides of losing your 1 job, but also raises your total monthly income so that you can be happier.

A simple way to start is by setting up small businesses. Working a remote position allows you more flexibility and time to build these side hustles. Besides, when you can avoid the daily commute and sitting in a corporate office for 9 hours, your health and energy levels will improve and thus you can be more productive.

Related: Health advantages you can reap by working from home

4. Set goals and achieve them

Lastly, find purpose by setting goals. 

Why set goals? Human beings are goal-seeking organisms, and we are at our happiest and most productive when moving towards a worthwhile target. 

What kind of goals should you set? Choose goals that make you feel excited and will improve your quality of life, instead of goals that society has conditioned you to be “good”, acceptable, or makes you a decent person.

How to achieve goals is an entirely huge topic by itself. Tim Ferriss recommends that rather than placing pressure on yourself to deliver massive results daily can be psychologically damaging. Instead, you want to have easily attainable daily goals that you can easily overshoot consistently, so that you can consistently experience the feeling of winning. 

So if you have large goals, break them down into yearly, monthly, and small daily targets that you can easily hit.

Summary

In summary, finding your purpose in a job is corporate rhetoric. There are severe downsides to attaching your worth and value to a job. 

You want to mitigate the downsides by following the path of money (safeguarding your value, time, and future). You can do so by building transferable career skills, job hopping, and starting a side business.

Set goals and live a life beyond your job. Do not romanticise it. Remember that the purpose of a job is to get paid. Do not get confused about what a job is.