My job as an author is to organize my thoughts and write them down. My work as an author is to inspire people, to motivate people, and to move people through my books.
But is a job different from work?
The Thin Line
I’m not sure if many people know exactly what it means to keep a job and what it means to work. More often than not, people think a job and work are all the same. Some even try to rationalize and attach different meanings to them.
Are you paid for your job or for your work? Which one is part of the other? Is your job smaller than your work, or is it the other way around?
Whatever the case, I don’t think people are clear about the difference between a job and work, so I decided to do two things: first, define each term based on the dictionary, and second, define them based on my personal observations and interpretation.
A “job,” according to Merriam-Webster’s, means “a piece of work done for private gain.” “Work,” on the other hand, means “activity in which one exerts strength and faculty to do or perform something.”
It seems to me, though, that a job is only a part of work. When people do a job they are paid, but not necessarily when they work. Work is more tedious and requires more energy than doing a job. With this distinction, I made myself believe that a job is more specific than work, and that people can have a job but actually not work at all.
An interesting distinction, isn’t it?
To make the distinction clearer, I’ll come up with several illustrations of the difference between a job and work. Later, we’ll discuss why people in the workplace need to realize that only a thin line separates a job from work or connects the two.
What’s the job of, say, a human resource practitioner? I asked this basic question in one convention where I was one of the speakers, and it’s interesting how simply the question was answered—“A human resource practitioner’s job is to scout, interview, recruit, and fire.”
Whew!
At first, that seemed to me a very easy, simplistic answer. Well, it was probably because human resources isn’t my field and I’m actually a stranger to the industry.
So I immediately threw in my second question: What is the work of a human resource practitioner?
Suddenly there was silence. Most of the audience seemed to be at a loss, trying desperately to retrieve something from their store of knowledge and experience. They were silently asking themselves, “Yeah, what’s my work as an HR practitioner?”
The answer, though, wasn’t forthcoming.
And I’d say that this situation isn’t unique to that particular audience. It’s also true to people in sales, in marketing, in operations, in customer service, in maintenance, in fact in every sphere of human activity.
What is your work?
And so in that same convention, I gave them some ideas based on how the dictionary puts it. I said, “As HR practitioners, maybe your work is to make people grow by placing then in appropriate positions.”
