The Unemployed Life

Should I Trade My White Collar for Blue?

After reading Matthew B. Crawford’s sometimes cantankerous essay in defense of his blue-collar profession in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, I felt inspired. Crawford described how he’d attempted with valor the white-collar route – advanced degrees, prestigious appointments – but resolved that for him, the more rewarding work came through his hands. So he’d become a high-end motorcycle repair specialist.

As Crawford notes, white-collar jobs are not exactly where it’s at right now. Even the Princeton economist Alan Blinder has lined up behind tradesman jobs, Crawford notes, because, “‘You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.’ Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.”

His story made me want to start that lamp-making business I’ve fantasized about. I began researching, hastily Googling – what are the margins? where could I sell them? where could I get low-cost materials? – but concluded that the financial motive wasn’t there for me.

And besides, profit is not the point of Crawford’s choice. He’s not talking about job security or financial fulfillment – his already modest $40/hour fee, he says, often works out to $20/hour because “I tend to work pretty slowly.”

Crawford’s emphasis is about personal reward. What’s that? Coming off an era of such excess and greed, it’s hard to properly recognize it. We paid lip service to “personal reward,” but that mostly meant making a lot of money. Books like Get Rich Quick extolled the virtues of money as the road to contentment. The 4-Hour Workweek said less work would reap more fulfillment. “Personal reward” became a perverted term.

So I’m not going to make those lamps. It seems fun and creative, and I’ve been carrying around an article from Martha Stewart Living for the last 10 years – from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Brooklyn to Manhattan – on how to make them. But Crawford really came alive handling motorcycle parts. “The physicality of it, and the clear specificity of what the project required of me, was a balm.” For me, the first thought was how I make money from it – not exactly the “personal reward” path he described. I’d only find myself frustrated by a shallow motivation.

But it’s a good time for all of us to do a little soul-searching for that personal reward path. Recently, a friend told me about the Johnson O’Connor test. This process – which runs for $600 – helps you identify your aptitudes by performing a number of tasks. The way you perform helps identify what you’re best at. In the 1940s, the test helped sports gear titan Howard Head, a Harvard grad once on a white-collar path that was driving him to boredom, discover that he had a great aptitude for working with his hands. The moment he drilled a bolt into an airplane part, he felt completely focused and centered, purposeful and rewarded. He went on to develop one of the best-selling ski brands. He later created Prince, the tennis brand. The Johnson O’Connor test also helped my friend’s wife discover her eye for design. Not only does she excel in this, she also finds it rewarding. Personally rewarding.

And although it’s not Crawford’s moral, it’s still possible to marry personal reward with monetary reward – though once you find yourself achieving other fulfillment, you may stop worrying so much about money.