Should I choose a job I enjoy or one that pays more?

Before choosing, I would look at what each job promises you beyond the work itself. The better-paid one may offer relief: the possibility of no longer calculating every unexpected expense. It may also offer the pleasure of finally being regarded as successful. These are different needs, even when the salary satisfies both.

The enjoyable job deserves the same curiosity. Does the work actually suit you, or do you love the person you imagine becoming by doing it? An attractive professional identity can conceal a very ordinary Tuesday.

I would hesitate to tell you that work need not be fulfilling. We spend too much of our lives there for that to be a small concession. But I would hesitate just as much to ask you to prove your authenticity by accepting financial anxiety.

Try describing each possible life without mentioning the job title or salary. Describe an evening after work: your energy, your worries, who gets your attention. You may discover that you are choosing between two ways of spending yourself.

Jing is right to ask what kind of evening follows the working day. I am less certain that work must carry so much responsibility for our fulfilment. A job can be useful, tolerable and fairly paid, while the most meaningful part of a life happens elsewhere.

The difficulty begins when we turn either choice into a virtue. Earning less does not make a person more authentic. Earning more does not make them more responsible. Responsibility has a particular shape: someone who depends on you, a promise you have made, a need that cannot wait. It is not an endlessly rising number.

In our bookshop, I sometimes spent a whole afternoon on invoices. Loving books did not make me love the invoices. It did make that inconvenience worth accepting.

Perhaps ask which difficulties you are willing to practise living with. Every path includes some. And leave yourself permission to choose again. A decision about your next job need not become a declaration about the meaning of your entire life.

I object to both proposals. Jing has requested a detailed account of your inner life. Jang has assigned you a lifetime of invoices. Neither has asked whether the office windows open.

We must interview the jobs themselves.

Ask the enjoyable one: ‘When you say we are passionate here, do you mean the work is interesting, or that nobody is paid for Thursday?’ Passion is a remarkably versatile word in the hands of someone preparing a contract.

Ask the better-paid one: ‘What, precisely, am I selling you?’ Forty hours is one price. Forty hours, both weekends and the ability to hear a notification without flinching is an entirely different product. Request an itemised offer.

Then bring each job a small, ordinary inconvenience. A dentist appointment. A broken train. The fact that you are occasionally a person. Watch its reaction.

Jang says you may choose again. Excellent. Tell the successful candidate that you are delighted to offer it a probationary period in your life. Its continued employment will depend on performance.