Types of Jobs

The types of jobs you get into will effect every moment of your life while you are working there and can even effect you far into the future.

It is critical that you plan this area of your life well and that you be willing to keep making changes as long as it takes until you are happy.

Because your happiness is everything.

The ability to make whatever changes are needed in your life is crucial.

Instead of breaking down jobs in terms of income, your likes and aptitudes, you need to break down jobs as to what type of job it is.

How to Categorize Types of Jobs for Your Long Term Happiness

Jobs can be categorized into 6 main areas

  1. Entry level/part-time jobs
  2. Full-time, hard work, no benefits, low pay jobs
  3. Long hours, hard work, decent benefits, good pay jobs
  4. Hit it big jobs
  5. Nothing good can come of it jobs
  6. Quality of Life jobs

Here are the details on each below.

Entry Level, Part-Time Types of Jobs

This is a good starting point for teenagers and college kids.  It is also good for younger married women with kids who has a good husband that makes a good income with good benefits.

It can be good for early retirees who want to stretch out their pensions.

Work like this includes most restaurant type of work, retail store workers and many entry type jobs.

Some of these jobs can be quite fun.  Some can be quite boring and drive you out of your mind.  Since they are relatively easy to get, you should feel no need to be loyal and move on as you need to.

These jobs aren't going to be good for most men for the long term.  You need to make more money, have some benefits and do big-time work that means something.

These jobs are good for your wife or girlfriend to do at a minimum if she is not willing or able to move up the scale into something better.

I was never able to get my wife to work.  The few times she did, usually for a month or two, our lives moved up fantastically.  You need every person in your house over the age of 16 working until their retirement.

I used to tell my wife that any income she made over zero helped us.  She disagreed preferring to stay home, refusing to work and claiming she helped our household out by finding good deals while shopping.

A not insignificant reason I left her.

Full-Time, Hard Work, No Benefits Types of Jobs

This is what my 21 year son is doing now.  He works 40 or more hours a week in his uncles cleaning business doing manual labor with only a portion of the work more white collar sales, office work and networking.

Here is how this type of job helps him

  • He makes more than minimum wage. 
  • He pays his own tuition at the technical college he attends part-time. 
  • He buys his own food except when he is home with me on weekends.
  • He buys his own gas and he drives a lot.
  • He pays his own car loan on the his nearly new Hyundai Elantra.
  • He also uses his own money to buy his own stuff like shoes and clothes.
  • He pays for his own fun like hanging out with friends, dating, car upgrades, video games, gym memberships and ski lift tickets..

I Do Help Him

  • I pay his car insurance.
  • He has a bedroom at my place and a place for his stuff.
  • I make his meals when he is with me and take him out for meals too.
  • I pay his dental bills.
  • He is on my health insurance.
  • He is the co-beneficiary on my big life insurance policy.
  • He uses my truck occasionally, especially for his summer trips with his buddies.

I give him a few modest money gifts throughout the year...nothing major. 

This type of work gives him a very good quality of life.  But, it is not the end for him, only the beginning.

Long Hours, Hard Work, Decent Benefits, Good Pay, Work is Everything Types of Jobs

This is the backbone type of work that ambitious men and women mostly get into.  I did this for 12 years.  A lot of men spend their entire working lives at this.

This would be the hard working people in small to medium sized businesses.  Both blue collar and white collar.  Hard work is not just construction workers sweating and straining.  It is also includes professionals taxing their minds to the limits at difficult tasks or dealing with difficult people and situations.

Hard-work builds the country and gives us all the well-run world we enjoy now.

These are the types of jobs that make all our lives better

This is the most important type of work for the planet.  Our civilization requires this hard work to give us all a fantastic quality of life.

It helped me to learn my field incredibly well.

Hopefully it will build your bank account.

If it doesn't you may be looking at a life spent working really hard for nothing.

It can be good if you do everything else right.

If you don't, you will have worked yourself into an early grave.

Hit It Big Types of Jobs

This is where we all would like to be...but most of us do not get there.  There seems to be a tiny slice of these jobs available.  This is the realm of huge money, fabulous benefits, gigantic pensions, stock options, fame and celebrity status. 

These are the types of jobs where the incomes are so high, a normal person could not ever spend the money just living normally.

You have to work very hard to spend that type of money. 

Here are a Few Examples

  • Professional athletes
  • Actors and Media Celebrities
  • Famous musicians
  • CEO's of major corporations
  • Owners of thriving businesses
  • High level politicians
  • Super performing salesmen
  • Extremely high income professionals
  • Internet millionaires

I do not begrudge people these fabulous jobs and lifestyles.  I think most of us would take their place if we could.

Envy or tearing down these types of people will not make you happy.  Only angry.

I like to see examples of great wealth because I like to enjoy a bit of small wealth from time to time.

Nothing Good Can Come Of It Types of Jobs

Please stay away from these types of jobs.  Quit, do something else.

Dangerous

Why would anyone do a dangerous job?  It makes no sense.  How can you be happy if at any time you could get killed or maimed?

Hard on your body

You will suffer big time from working any job that over-stresses your body, injures you leaving you a mess and a shell.  Professional athletes usually deal with this.  They make so much money and have had such a good life that most of them overlook this hard on your body aspect.

Boring

You may have to put up with a bit of boredom from time to time.  But if your work life is mostly boring, you need to find something better.

Killing people

Being in the military is the absolute worst job you can have. It has the characteristics of the all the worst jobs,,,boring, tedious, no freedom, low pay and your job description is to kill people.  You will have a hard time living with yourself...known as post traumatic stress disorder after you kill people because you are told to.

Quality of Life Types of Jobs

You should be striving to get into a quality of life job, continually working toward this and trying to spend as many years as possible here.

My first full time job out of college job was almost a quality of life job.  It was a civil engineer at the City of Milwaukee. 

This job had many of the pros of a quality of life job 

  • Decent pay
  • Great benefits
  • Stable
  • Only 40 hours a week
  • Paid vacations
  • Sick leave
  • Longer lunch
  • Paid breaks
  • Inexpensive coffee.
  • A large enough staff that there were interesting people to interact with.

Financially, it was like I was rich compared to the 7 years of college, where I worked little and for low pay.  My big paychecks provided a very good lifestyle for me and allowed me to quickly pay off my student loans, save a lot of money, buy some cool things and have some fun.

It had the promise of a good pension and a lifetime job.

The main cons were that the work was boring and it was going to be difficult to advance.

I made the most of it.  I worked myself up into being the go-to engineer.  The one who got all the hot jobs, the projects that needed to be done fast and the more complicated ones.

But it was still too boring.

I left there after only 2-1/2 years.  Everything was going so well in my life except I was bored at work.

A boring job is one of the worst types of jobs

I moved to a long hours, hard work consulting engineering job but only lasted 4 months there.  It did not feel right.

I went right back to my old job at the City and stayed there another 7 years, putting up with the boredom and lack of opportunity.  By that time I had started family life.  First with a little old house for me and my fiance, then marriage, more debts and a baby.  Then another baby a few years later.

I put up with the boredom at work because life at home was overwhelming and filled with frustrations.  Boring work was like a  vacation from a chaotic personal life.

But I could not shake the type of work it was and wanted something better.  Plus I  hated having to live in the City because of the poor public schools for my little children.

So I kept looking and finally found a good job for me at the time.

It was definitely a long hours, hard work, decent benefits, good pay type of job.

But it was never boring, very challenging and allowed us to move into the safe suburbs with the good schools.

If the economy would not have recessed into a depression, wiping out all the work we did, I would probably still be there.

I had to move on.

And I have found the quality of life job that I wish all people had.

This is the type of work I have now.  It has all the quality of life features that are critical to your life running smoothly and it is very interesting.

Quality of Life Job Features

  • Good pay.  From the research I have done, the minimum quality of life pay in the US is when you make at least $40,000 as a younger person.  A better number to give you are great quality of life is in the range of $60,000 to $85,000 as you get older.  Of course, if you live in an expensive area, this is not nearly enough.
  • Plenty of time off.  No matter how much you enjoy your work you need time to do other things.  Vacations, holidays, personal days and sick leave make it possible for you to have a life.
  • Flexibility to start, end and come and go as you need to.
  • Health insurance that has a low monthly premium relative to your income and that pays for the majority of the expenses when you use it.
  • A guaranteed pension.
  • Various insurance benefits that do not cost much but provide a lot of peace of mind such as life insurance and disability insurance.
  • An interesting and comfortable place to be at most of the day.
  • A large enough staff that makes it fun to be there.
  • Work that you find fascinating that play to your skills and that provides value to others.

These types of jobs will give you enormous satisfaction and a fantastic quality of life.

In fact I love my engineering career so much now I am thinking of ways I can continue it long into my old age.

One More Thing -
Try to Move Into the Types of Jobs
That You are Most Suited To

From Human Metrics

Jung Typology Test

This is the Jung personality test.  Once you take this FREE test, you will get the results in the form of the 16 personalities. 

I just took it and found out I am a ISTJ, which Introverted-Sensing-Thinking-Judging.  It confirmed engineering was a good choice for me.  I wish I had taken this test 25 years ago.

Here are my results -

ISTJ

Introvert(31%)  Sensing(1%)  Thinking(9%)  Judging(12%)

You have moderate preference of Introversion over Extraversion (31%)You have marginal or no preference of Sensing over Intuition (1%)You have slight preference of Thinking over Feeling (9%)You have slight preference of Judging over Perceiving (12%)

› › Types of Jobs

The only way I could become the happier man I am today was by leaving my wife.  You might be in the same situation I was in.  I suggest you take a look at my book - Leave Your Wife & Become a Happier Man with the 3 Step System.

Click to go to learn more about the book

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