THERE’S a joke in there, of course, and like all jokes it has a serious point.

I heard someone approaching retirement age make it recently and it made me smile, because it was pretty obvious that he loved his work and simply felt like it was still play-time every day.

So the idea of a “serious”

adult job wasn’t in his map of the world. I’m not for a minute suggesting he didn’t take his work seriously. Quite the reverse – he worked long hours and did plenty of that extra mile stuff. But he did it all mostly because it was fun and it made him feel good.

Lucky man, you might think, and you’d be right. Most of us spend a fair bit of time doing jobs that we think will make us successful and happy only to find that it really is a bit too much like hard work, too much of the time. So beware of that very British instinct to wear a hair shirt and studiously apply only for the “proper” jobs.

Think back to the games you played as a child and the roles you took on. Maybe you haven't quite got the grades in this real adult world to be a world famous brain surgeon. But be honest now – what was it about the idea of being a world famous brain surgeon that thrilled your child-like imagination? I know a motor mechanic who as an adult gets the same sense of absorbed fascination out of the intricacies of a car engine as he did when he played at being Dr Miracle as a young child (and pound for pound, he reckons the stress levels are a lot less).

It’s true. Work is rightly a serious business for a lot of the time. There are responsibilities, decisions, and always the ups and downs of fortune. But if you’re not having fun yet, maybe you could dust off that childhood dream and see what it has to tell you about your next career move? Because getting the career you deserve is really no joke.

But sometimes it doesn’t make me smile because it masks a real disappointment.

This is the person who is stuck in a job that doesn’t fulfil them and is well below their capabilities. It’s easier perhaps to joke that you’re still waiting to “grow up” than admit that your childhood dream – whatever that was – feels like it is just not going to happen.