As you read this while packed like a sardine on the 8.06 from Orpington or during a few snatched minutes in your 18-hour day, it might have crossed your mind that the legal life is really not for you.
According to John Clark's new book, The Money or Your Life, many people, who appear to be enjoying extremely successful careers, are not being true to themselves. They would rather be doing something else, but are reluctant to step off the career ladder for fear of falling into the unknown.
Clark, 47, a career counsellor and management consultant from Auckland, New Zealand, knows exactly how these people feel because he was just like them. A high-flying commercial solicitor, taking in spells in London with Linklaters and in the US as a member of General Motors' legal department, Clark became the national managing partner of Rudd Watts & Stone, one of New Zealand's top-four firms, with 150 partners.
But the accolades and material benefits did not prevent the feelings of angst that had been developing from day one at law school, where he went after a careers adviser suggested it as a way of keeping his options open.
He is critical of the mechanical way careers advice is doled out to those at the start of their working lives, without really looking to the individual's interests.
"Careers advisers should talk with a person and find an interest that brings a glint to the eye and then work on helping them into that area," he says. Armed with a law degree, following a career in the profession seemed inevitable to him.
"Because I had no expectations of enjoying work, I just gritted my teeth and got on with it. Work was a necessary evil," he says.
After 11 years in practice, he had had enough. Fortunately, his firm suggested that he move into the management side of the business. Clark had just returned from a three-month sabbatical, during which he listened to the nagging voice in his head that kept telling him that he should get out of law.
"It took a long time for then truth to dawn: legal practice is a wonderful career – if you are cut out for it. For some lawyers, their work is their passion – I just did not happen to be one of them," he says.
He initially blamed external factors for his inability to enjoy his work, including the entire profession and his firm, before finally realising the source of the problem lay within himself.
"Finally, I realised that I had to take personal responsibility for creating a new working life – one that would fit the kind of person I am."
Clark left the firm in 1993 and began the second stage of his working life, including writing his book. He says many of his colleagues and associates considered the move a "brave call", but he thinks it would have been a braver call to stick with the white-collar executive life he found so uncomfortable.
He says: "It really unsettled some of them that I was escaping the prison, that I was leaving that world and they did not like that I was having so much fun." Interestingly, many of these doubting Thomases have revised their view in the years since and, according to Clark, some have even consulted him.
He is not claiming to have rediscovered the wheel or to be some guru; he believes his book merely sets out basic fundamentals, which are already known.
He dipped his toe into the literary world as a way to help others release talent that lay dormant. As a managing partner, Clark was involved in one-on-one interviews with colleagues and found they had a temporary energising effect. But in short period of time things usually returned back to the way they were.
"I thought, 'How do you permanently unleash the talent of these people?'. I thought it would be a good idea to write a book," he explains.
It was during research for the book that Clark came across the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who provided the framework for many of the ideas expounded in the book. The key idea is being in a job that provides satisfaction and happiness; what Campbell refers to as "following your bliss".
Clark explains: "The key to unleashing talent is to understand the hopes that stir deep inside the individual and go with it."
The main point stressed in the book is that no-one is stuck in a straightjacket, change is always possible if the individual wants it. He says: "Work should not primarily be about earning a living, it is more about growing as a person and living life in tune with their hopes and interests."
According to Clark, work is divided between two categories: careers and callings. Careers are based on the orthodox employment structure of viewing work as a means to an end. Its purpose is to earn a living and fulfil material needs, but it is the opposite of leisure and is mandatory, with any enjoyment a bonus. But Clark suggests that being stuck in an unfulfilling career can lead to a state of angst and unhappiness.
A calling, on the other hand, is something that someone is called to do from within – what Clark calls your "core self". But the counsellor is keen to point out there is no quick fix to finding a calling. It can take many years of exploring a topic area and positioning before a person finally finds their calling.
"A lot of people see themselves as failures if they do not find what they want to do after a year or two. But a sensible timeframe could be six, seven or even 10 years, before they find out what really suits them."
The nature of the calling could mean working in one area or spreading across several types of paid and voluntary jobs, with work being structured to the individual's needs.
Clark believes too many people engaged in law are wedded to careers rather than callings and are consequently unhappy. He says: "In big firms possibly only 20% of partners enjoy their work. Publicly they deny this, but get them on their own in a quiet moment and there is a lot of despair there."
He claims research in the US has revealed lawyers to be among the most depressed and suicidal people within their communities. "The reality is that commercial law practice at the higher levels is extremely tough. Rather than slag off their firm the individual must take responsibility for the sort of work they choose to do."
Clark believes the confusion between career and calling develops from an early age, when a child starts performing well at school. He says: "Many bright kids get good marks and end up entering the professions as a recognition of their academic abilities rather than because of any actual calling."
With many bookshops stuffed with self-help books, Clark realises the competition for readers is intense, but believes his personal experience edges out some of the others. "The difference is that I have been there and experienced the white-collar world; many of the other books are written by theologians or New Age characters with no direct experience of it," he says.
The book was first published in New Zealand three years ago, and has since been translated into many languages, including Mandarin. Clark is working on a new book and hopes to come to Europe to promote the book and, depending on the success of the book, to conduct a series of lectures.
Clark sums up his approach: "I am not trying to turn people against their work, I am just trying to help them find something they enjoy."