Don’t choose a career right now. Just be curious!
“Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. They don’t have to define themselves in terms of a career. A single identity can close the door to alternatives. Instead of trying to narrow their options, help them broaden their possibilities. They don’t have to be one thing - they can do many things.”
That’s from Adam Grant, in his excellent book Think Again.
And in his wonderful recent careers book The World Needs You, JP Michel takes this starting point, and goes on to flesh out an alternative: The Challenge Mindset.
He suggests instead of deciding what job you would like to do, think about the sorts of problems you’d like to solve. (He then suggests a structured and supported way to explore those problems, the potential knowledge required to solve them, and the people currently working in that area).
Meanwhile, James Clear, in his million seller Atomic Habits, warns against fixing your identity around something that is inflexible. Why, because a fixed identity is brittle, and easily broken if it isn’t achieved, or is taken away from you.
He himself identified so strongly as being an athlete, that when his baseball career ended, he struggled to find himself.
Whats my experience?
In my career, I never made my decisions in quite the analytical way as these authors suggest, but equally, I’ve never actually decided what I wanted to “be”.
Did I want to be a marketer? Not really. A university administrator? Definitely not. An entrepreneur? Maybe, but I didn’t think I had what it takes. And yet, I’ve been all of these things, and very happily so.
Why? Because, from very early in my career, I’ve been able to see the sorts of problems I wanted to solve. I saw first-hand at university just how many students turned up on day one of their degree and had absolutely no idea why they had chosen to do it, nor what to expect now they were there.
I’ve done this in various ways: as a student union vice-president, introducing new induction sessions to Fresher’s Week, as a schools liaison officer, delivering advice in schools, as a university marketer, building prospective student communications, as an entrepreneur developing peer-to-peer chat technology to connect prospective students with current students, and now as a writer and podcaster, writing this.
One problem, many jobs!
How does this help you as you start and develop your career?
Well, if you got Adam Grant, JP Michel and James Clear into a room together, and asked them for advice on choosing a career, what they would probably say in unison is:
“Don’t choose a career right now!”
Choosing a career too early will narrow your perspective and potentially leave you hung out to dry if you don’t get there.
Oh, and there is a very good chance that the career won’t exist in a few years time, at least not in the way it is now.
Worse still, in a few years time the career does still exist, you are in it, and you hate it.
And don’t even think about worrying that you haven’t found the challenge that you want to solve just yet. That is perfectly normal. Everyone finds their challenge at a different stages.
Instead…
Reflect on yourself, your strengths, and your weaknesses. What do you find easy that others don’t? What do you enjoy, that others find a grind?
Think about your interests. What are the things you like to do in your spare time? What is it about them that keeps you interested and makes you come back again and again?
Consider what challenges there are in the world that you might be interested in solving.
They could be large, world-wide problems like climate change, health or poverty. They could be the more mundane everyday issues that we all face, around issues like transport, buildings or food. They could be problems that impact millions, but go unnoticed (like the problem I work on!). Or they could be things that aren’t really problems at all, but where there are certainly challenges to be met, like entertainment, music or sport.
Then, just be curious: Explore, explore, explore.
Make it your mission to fully understand what makes you stand out, in terms of your skills, and your talents. Then double down on developing these skills to make you stand out even more.
Make it your mission to explore the things you enjoy and see what you can get involved in, and understand where it might lead in terms of jobs and challenges.
And make it your mission to learn more and more about the problems you’ve identified, through your studies at school and university, through professionals in those industries (LinkedIn is a great place to start), and through work experience (in the real world or online platforms such as Springpod).
As you explore, you’ll find there are things that surprise you.
You’ll find some things that are not nearly as interesting as you’d hoped. And you’ll find some things will capture your imagination in ways you never expected.
Over time, you’ll find a match between your strengths, your interests, and a real-world challenge that needs to be addressed.
And somewhere in there, you’ll find a career that will reward you for years to come.
And if you do it right, I can almost guarantee it won’t be what you expected!
