Yesterday the governor of my state, Andrew Cuomo, said this:

 You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.

As someone who works professionally in the field of career development, I have something to say about this.

However, first of all, I want to say this: It is getting tiring to see the predominant ethic of shame on social media. If someone says something others don’t like, that person is shamed and silenced rather than respected. But the foundation of a free society is allowing people to say things you don’t agree with, and treating them with respect. Instead of shaming a person, the thing to do is express your disagreement by using reason and argument — and doing so in a gracious and respectful way. And you need to assume the best of a person. A society is healthier when all sorts of different views are able to be presented without threat of social stigma and social harm (shame is a form of social harm), and we treat one another fairly. Beyond this, if you resort to shame it is an almost immediate tip off that you might not actually have actually formulated good reasons for your position.

To apply this to Cuomo’s statement means this: This is probably one of those things he wishes he had said differently. Sometimes we all say things in the moment that come across differently than we mean. In this case, his comment seems very insensitive. I think he would probably prefer to revise it.

Now, to focus on the issues, his statement raises two broader issues that often come up in many other ways as well. First, the comment raises the issue of job choice. And the answer it implies is the wrong one (albeit somewhat common). The problem is that it goes against the nature of what it takes to build an effective career. To build an effective career, you have to give concern to what kind of jobs are a good fit for you. You cannot only say “this is available, this is easy to get, this is what I will do.” That is a reductionistic approach to career management that does not take skill and job satisfaction into account — things which are very important (even if they don’t always feel urgent — on which, see below). This approach is less effective — not only for you, but also for the positive impact you will be able to have on others. Even temporarily, it is a risky approach to choosing jobs. It is also inefficient. Should the sales manager at a car dealer, whose work is on hold right now, really set aside his career in order to take a job in an Amazon warehouse for three weeks? This implies that switching jobs is easy and can be done at the drop of a hat. Further, maybe it’s better for the sales manager to be getting ready to get back to work and taking this time to sharpen his skills and do professional development. Beyond this, it is not up to the government to tell people what jobs they should and should not be pursuing.

Second, it raises the issue of whether it is most helpful to speak in terms of “essential workers.” Here, productivity comes into play. What we are dealing with here is not actually the categories of “essential” and “non-essential,” but “urgent” and “important.”

What we really mean when we speak of “essential” work is urgent work. Almost all jobs are, I would say, essential in one way or another. Or, to put it in productivity terms, important. The issue is that some jobs that are important deal with urgent needs, and some jobs that are important deal with non-urgent needs. The fact that something is not-urgent does not mean it is not important. It just means you can delay dealing with it for a time. But if you delay dealing with it indefinitely, there is a price to pay — that is just as bad as ignoring urgent needs. In fact, if you don’t do the non-urgent but important work, it causes the urgent and important work to build — it’s why so often we are putting out fires.

Here is an example. Drinking water is urgent and important. If I go more than a day without drinking any water, I will start to experience many negative effects and fairly soon, my health will be at risk. Exercising, on the other hand, is not urgent. I can skip running for three days, or even a week, and not experience negative health ramifications. But if I never go running (or regularly exercising in some other way), I will experience significant long-term health issues. Exercising is important, but not urgent. As you can see, the fact that it is not urgent does not mean that it is not important, and it does not mean that I can put it off indefinitely.

So it is with “essential” and “non-essential” workers. The “non-essential workers” are doing things that are important and must be done. They are, in other words, doing truly essential things. They are just not doing things that are as urgent as those in the category being called “essential.”

Out of respect for all types of work, and all types of lawful careers, I would therefore suggest a better term is “urgent” workers, rather than “essential” workers.

This is an excellent message by Chip Roper, one of the best current thinkers on faith and work, delivered recently at the New York City chapter of the New Canaan Society.

It’s called “Winning at Work.” In it, Chip hits on two different types of work we do. First, there is work we do simply because we have to. This is work as a means to an end. Second, there is work we do because we want to. This is work as an end in itself.

Many of us have much of the first kind of work in our jobs and in our lives. There will always be some of that. But to be most effective (and fulfilled) in our work, we need to move our roles to consist more and more of the second kind of work.

Here is a great summary from the New Canaan Society newsletter:

Chip asked us to remember when the idea of work became real for us. For Chip it was the chores he was assigned as a child: that was work as a means to an end, work you have to do to get what you want.  But there was other “work” Chip voluntarily embraced growing up—constructing forts, putting together pushcarts, building treehouses.  Lots of sweat and effort, but no obligation.  This is work as an end in and of itself, work you want.  What if you think of your work on this continuum, somewhere between the chores and the treehouse?  Where are you most days?  When Chip found himself stuck on the chores end of the spectrum, it was a signal that he wasn’t winning at work anymore, and that he needed to consider significant change.

And as an aside, I recommend the New Canaan Society for Christians in the workforce (there are many chapters throughout the country, and especially on the east coast).

I also recommend the excellent organization that Chip leads, the Voca Center. You can read his blog at Marketplace Faith.

Everything you do can become an agent for good. The activities of our everyday lives are themselves part of the good works God created us for in Christ (Ephesian 2). And, therefore, they have great meaning. Don’t just try to get things done; seek to serve others to the glory of God in everything you do.

Doing good work also doesn’t just happen accidentally. We have to be intentional in making plans for the welfare of others. And then we have to be proactive in carrying those plans out.

Note Ephesians 5:15–17: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

We are not to breeze through life, but to “look carefully” at how we walk. We don’t just walk through a store with our eyes closed, buying whatever we touch, and expect it to turn into a wardrobe. Nor should we do that with our time and opportunities. We are to “make the most” of the time. The time doesn’t make the most of itself; we are to take back the time from poor uses and turn it to good uses.

Let us plan to do good with the time we’ve been given today.

For more, see Chapter 4 and 5 in What’s Best Next.

This is a great TEDx talk by Ryan Hartwig, co-author of Teams that Thrive. It’s called “The Myth of Meaningful Work.”

Does this mean that we are wrong-headed in wanting our work to be meaningful?

Not in the slightest. What he means is this: meaning is not something first of all found in the job. Rather, meaning is something you bring to the job. We make our work meaningful. We can (and must) bring meaning to our jobs.

Meaning is in the way the work is done, and therefore any task — whether it is regarded as “meaningful” by society or not — can be done with incredible significance.

In fact, it used to be that most people did experience a deep connection between their work and meaning. So what happened?

Scientific management.

We changed the way we do work as a society in the quest to utterly maximize efficiency. The result was that we turned work, which is in itself meaningful, into alienating labor. We forced people to start doing work in ways that take the meaning out of their tasks by reducing the space for personal initiative and contribution and introducing more control-oriented management practices.

Of course, as he points out, there were many excellent benefits of scientific management. It really did increase efficiency, and that was needed. But the principles were taken too far.

What we need to do is find ways to help people overcome the gap between work and meaning that has been imposed so often not from the tasks themselves, but from the way in which we make people do them.

The talk is a great overview of these things, and closes with four suggestions for helping people bring meaning back into their work.

Sometimes, Dorothy Sayers sounds like Seth Godin. Here’s what she says in her superb essay “Why Work?,” referring to one of the main implications of the view of work she has just outlined:

A fourth consequence is that we should fight tooth and nail, not for mere employment, but for the quality of the work that we had to do. We should clamor to be engaged on work that was worth doing, and in which we can take pride.

The worker would demand that the stuff he helped to turn out should be good stuff….

There would be protests and strikes — not only about pay and conditions, but about the quality of the work demanded and the honesty, beauty, and usefulness of the goods produced. The greatest insult which a commercial age has offered to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end-product of the work and to force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making.

Fast forwarding about 70 years, I think Sayers would agree whole-heartedly with the vision for work Godin outlines on his blog and books, especially Linchpin: 

In bestsellers such as Purple Cow and Tribes, Seth Godin taught readers how to make remarkable products and spread powerful ideas. But this book is about you-your choices, your future, and your potential to make a huge difference in whatever field you choose.

There used to be two teams in every workplace: management and labor. Now there’s a third team, the linchpins. These people figure out what to do when there’s no rule book. They delight and challenge their customers and peers. They love their work, pour their best selves into it, and turn each day into a kind of art.

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. They may not be famous but they’re indispensable. And in today’s world, they get the best jobs and the most freedom.

As Godin writes, “Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.”