Another thing I wish I’d known when I was 18 is this. Work, jobs and careers are all completely different things.
I wasn’t clever enough at the time to get a place at university. Unlike these days, you actually had to be outstanding in your academic abilities to get enough decent “A” level scores here in old England to get into even a nondescript university. So I accepted that when I’d finished those exams I’d have to get a job.
My mother thought I’d be best suited for office work, and we both had some hazy idea that I ought to embark on a career. The result was that I spent over a year working as an insurance clerk, doing probably the most boring work I’ve ever had to do.
In that time things became so bad that I took the chance presented to me of entering the legal profession, in spite of having realised at an early stage that I was hopeless at organising files. This was back in the 1960s, before computers in the workplace was the norm. Everything was done on paper.
For the next few years I regarded qualifying as a lawyer as a kind of challenge – passing the onerous exams and surviving the low-paid and complicated work in the office until I reached the end of the rainbow and claimed the pot of gold.
Of course there was no pot of gold. There was just the grim reality that I’d spend most of the rest of my life in an office working with people, some of whom I liked and some I didn’t, and trying to satisfy clients, some of whom were pleasant and some horrible.
The money wasn’t too bad, though it could have been better. But the thing that I hated about it was the fact that, in order to progress up the ladder, you had to conform. And be polite to people you despised. I never was any good at acting at school, and that never changed, so you can imagine how well I handled the situation.
Things were completely different from what I had envisaged when I entered the law. I felt I had lost control. Yet had I but realised it I had in my hands the means to jettison all of that, take my life back, and incidentally earn more money than I ever would carrying on with what I was doing.
You see, work, jobs and careers are all different, yet I didn’t really want any of them. I don’t suppose I was alone in that. How many people hate their jobs, yet, because they are poor, live in fear of losing it?
If you really want to do something with your life, and have a great time with it, then decide at an early stage exactly what you want to be. Then work out how you’re going to get there.
Whatever you do all day, even if you find it uninspiring, work to make yourself the best there is at it. By doing that you’ll make sure you quickly move on to the next rung of the ladder. Establish if the knowledge you have acquired is enough to help other people with a problem they have.
If you can articulate other people’s problems and provide a solution then you have the makings of an information product that you’ll be able to sell over and over again. Then you’ll be rich, and you won’t need a job or a career.
Philip Gegan
