My Work, My Joy

How to work longer

… those who love their work crack the code on how to stay employable and employed way past whatever ORA applies to them. Even though Malaysia’s ORA is now 60, most countries have set their ORAs beyond ours to between 62 and 68.

Furthermore, global demography suggests every country’s ORA is set to rise throughout the 21st century because of the greying of humanity.

In this era of lengthening lifespans, often into the 80s and 90s, and when the fastest growing demographic slice of humanity is the centenarian (100+) group, it is easy to comprehend why the biggest risk in personal retirement is longevity risk. Too many of us have a high probability of running out of retirement funds before we run out of breath – permanently.

So, working longer for active income in the form of a salary or for personal business profits is beneficial to employees and business owners.

For conventional employees who work for a salary derived from a business owned by others, the best way to stay relevant and needed by your bosses is growing so outstanding at your job that it would take, say, five younger people to inadequately replace you! It would be better if in addition to being practically irreplaceable through sheer excellence, you also love what you do.

Admittedly though, it’s easier to keep working for money if we are ensconced in the driver’s seat.

Translation: Those who are self-employed or who control the companies or businesses providing them with a livelihood may keep working for as long as their bodies and minds hold out and for as long as their customers and clients desire their services.

My father, who passed away more than a decade ago on April 4, 2008, kept working successfully as a lawyer till just past his 85th birthday in late 2007.

Regardless of whether you’re a conventional employee or an owner of a business, two factors – excellence or competence and love or passion – must be present if your goal is to keep working a long time. Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winning novelist Pearl S. Buck once observed, “The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.”

From a Christian perspective, there is much in the Bible that reinforces Buck’s viewpoint. For instance, Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians made it clear that regardless of what our jobs may be and who our earthly masters are, ultimately we are to work diligently and with integrity for Jesus our Lord. (Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men…”)

American civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., best describes the way each of us should live out our vocation:

“…if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well’.”

Rev. King’s main point wasn’t sweeping streets excellently, even though that is an important job; he advocated aspiring to world class excellence.

Someone else who understood this was technology icon Steve Jobs. Before his death from pancreatic cancer in October 2011, Jobs said, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Loving our jobs and setting sheer excellence as our goal are not always easy. Thankfully, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus is alive and eager to help us through life’s rough – and roughest – patches. (Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”)

We would be unwise to not covet His help.