There is nothing wrong with having a job because it pays the bills.
Mortgages need paying. Families need supporting. Food, energy, childcare and everything else have a habit of arriving whether you’re feeling fulfilled at work or not.
But there is a question worth asking occasionally:
Is your job supporting the life you want, or has your life gradually reorganised itself around your job?
Those are two very different things.
In optics, it can be surprisingly easy for the second one to happen. The work is structured around clinics, patients, rotas and opening hours. Saturdays are often part of the deal. Practices need cover. Patients need appointments. Before long, you’ve built your entire week around the requirements of the practice without really stopping to ask whether those requirements still work for you.
The job might be perfectly respectable.
It might even be a good job.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still the right job for the life you’re trying to build.
A Good Job Can Still Be the Wrong Fit
This is something I’ve seen many times in recruitment.
People often assume they need a dramatic reason to consider changing jobs.
A terrible manager. Awful working conditions. A huge disagreement. An impossible commute. Burnout.
But sometimes nothing is particularly wrong.
You’ve simply changed.
The role that suited you five years ago might not suit you now.
Perhaps Saturdays didn’t bother you when you first qualified, but now you’ve got a young family and suddenly weekends matter enormously.
Maybe you once enjoyed working in a fast-paced multiple because it developed your confidence and efficiency, but now you want longer testing times and more clinical autonomy.
Perhaps you joined an independent because you wanted stability, but several years later you’re looking for progression that simply isn’t available there.
None of those situations makes the employer bad.
And it doesn’t make you ungrateful.
It means careers and lives evolve.
What Is Your Job Actually Giving You?
Salary is obviously part of the equation.
It matters.
But when people assess jobs, they sometimes concentrate so heavily on salary that they ignore everything else they’re exchanging for it.
Your job is also buying your time.
Your energy.
Your Saturdays.
Your commute.
Your flexibility.
Sometimes your evenings.
Occasionally, quite a lot of your mental attention.
So instead of simply asking “Am I paid enough?”, it can be useful to ask:
“Is the overall exchange still working for me?”
Someone earning slightly less but working four days, ten minutes from home, with longer testing times might consider themselves considerably better off than somebody earning another £8,000 but commuting an hour each way and working every Saturday.
There isn’t a universally correct answer.
The important thing is knowing what matters to you.
Your Priorities Will Change During Your Optical Career
One of the mistakes people make is assuming their career priorities should remain consistent.
They won’t.
A newly qualified optometrist might reasonably prioritise experience. They may want a busy practice, exposure to different pathology and colleagues around them who can help develop their clinical confidence.
Five years later, progression or salary might become more important.
Later still, flexibility may suddenly outrank both.
I’ve spoken with experienced professionals who reached a point where an extra £5,000 genuinely wasn’t worth another hour in the car every day.
Others have willingly taken on more responsibility because partnership, management or ownership was exactly where they wanted their career to go.
Neither decision is more ambitious than the other.
They simply reflect different lives.
The danger comes when you continue pursuing an old definition of success long after it has stopped meaning very much to you.
Think About Your Actual Week
Forget the job description for a moment.
Think about your real Monday to Sunday.
What time do you leave home?
What time do you actually get back?
How often do you work Saturdays?
When do you exercise, see friends or spend proper time with your family?
How much energy do you have when you get home?
How much of Sunday is genuinely Sunday, and how much of it is mentally preparing for Monday?
This gives you a much more accurate picture of what your job costs.
Because a 40-hour job isn’t necessarily a 40-hour job.
Add five hours of commuting. Add the Saturday that prevents family plans. Add the evening spent thinking about an unresolved patient complaint.
Suddenly the footprint of work becomes much larger than the contracted hours suggest.
Money Matters, But Know What You’re Earning It For
There can be a strange point in a career where earning more stops automatically improving your life.
The salary rises.
So does the mortgage.
The car gets better.
Spending increases.
And suddenly the higher salary that was supposed to create freedom becomes the reason you feel unable to change jobs.
This isn’t an argument against earning well. Optical professionals should understand their market value and be appropriately rewarded for their skills and responsibility.
But money works best when it serves something.
Security.
A home.
Family.
Travel.
Freedom.
Retirement.
Whatever matters to you.
If you don’t know what you’re earning the money for, it’s surprisingly easy to spend decades simply earning more of it.
Would You Choose This Working Life Again?
Here’s a useful question.
Imagine you were offered your current job today.
Same salary.
Same manager.
Same testing times.
Same commute.
Same Saturdays.
Same responsibilities.
Same opportunities for progression.
Knowing everything you now know, would you accept it?
You don’t need to immediately resign if the answer is no.
But it’s valuable information.
Maybe the problem is something quite specific.
You need one Saturday off each month.
You want a four-day week.
You need more clinical variety.
You want management responsibility.
You’d like to develop in myopia management, dry eye or enhanced services.
Perhaps you simply haven’t had a meaningful salary review for three years.
Once you’ve identified the actual issue, you can do something about it.
Don’t Confuse Familiarity With Alignment
People can become extremely comfortable in jobs that no longer suit them.
You know the patients.
You know where everything is.
You understand the systems.
Your colleagues know you.
You could probably navigate the practice half asleep.
There is enormous value in that familiarity, particularly if you enjoy the environment.
But comfort and alignment aren’t quite the same thing.
You can be comfortable while becoming increasingly frustrated.
You can be competent while becoming increasingly bored.
You can be secure while quietly wondering what happened to the ambitions you had five years ago.
Occasionally, it’s worth separating:
“I’m happy here.”
from:
“I’m used to being here.”
Don’t Assume the Answer Is Leaving
This is important.
Career reflection shouldn’t automatically become job hunting.
Sometimes the best move is staying exactly where you are and changing something within the role.
Talk to your Practice Manager or owner.
Ask about progression.
Discuss your testing times.
Request different responsibilities.
Explore a four-day week.
Ask whether Saturdays can be distributed differently.
Find out whether the practice would support additional training.
Good employers would generally rather have that conversation than discover six months later that a valued member of the team has accepted another job.
And sometimes you discover that your current employer can offer far more flexibility than you assumed.
But Don’t Stay Somewhere Purely Because It Pays You
There is another side to this.
I’ve spoken with candidates who have spent years knowing a role isn’t right because the salary made leaving difficult.
Eventually the golden handcuffs become very real.
The longer you stay, the harder the decision feels.
That’s why career decisions need to look beyond the next payslip.
If you’re spending forty-plus hours every week somewhere, those hours are part of your life.
They aren’t simply what happens before your real life starts.
A successful optical career should ideally allow you to practise well, earn appropriately, develop professionally and still have enough of yourself left for the life outside the practice.
You won’t achieve the perfect balance every year.
Life doesn’t work like that.
There will be periods where career comes first. There may be years where family comes first. Sometimes financial security has to dominate the decision.
That’s fine.
What matters is that you’re making the choice consciously rather than waking up five years from now and realising your job made it for you.
Take Stock Before You Make Your Next Move
If you’re questioning your current role, don’t start with job adverts.
Start with your life.
What matters to you now?
What do you want more of?
What are you willing to compromise on?
And what are you no longer willing to compromise on?
Then look at your career through that lens.
Because the highest salary isn’t always the best job.
The most impressive title isn’t necessarily progress.
And staying somewhere familiar isn’t automatically security.
Sometimes career progression means moving upwards.
Sometimes it means earning more.
And sometimes it simply means finding a role that allows you to get home at a reasonable time, see the people you care about and enjoy your Saturday.
That’s still progress.
Your job absolutely needs to pay the bills.
But every so often, make sure you haven’t forgotten what you’re paying those bills for.
