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My clients in their 20s often want help processing issues regarding their careers. That decade of our lives is usually where we’re right in the middle of having our decisions regarding what we do for work really start to define who we are and how we identify ourselves.
For many of us, our career defines us. It’s the answer to the common question, “What do you do?” This question can easily be the spark that kicks off a brush fire of anxiety inside us.
We do something, don’t we? Of course we do. But what if what we do is something we don’t really love doing? We might not want to be defined by what we currently do.
So do we answer with what we currently do, or what we hope to do someday? Do we even know what we hope to do someday? We might do many things that bring us different levels of satisfaction, but then how to explain that?
In the not-so-recent past, people went to school to study to work in certain fields, then got jobs in those fields, and then worked at those jobs until they retired. Nowadays, things aren’t so simple. The chances of working for the same company your whole career, or even staying in the same career, are much smaller than ever before. The question of “What do you do?” has changed in its meaning and significance to our definition of ourselves.
I think that, while this question itself is not going to change, over time the answers will. Or more specifically, society’s expectations for the answers to this question will change.
Nowadays people are more likely to have multiple careers throughout their lives, often at the same time. As you start out on the path of your working life you’re likely to try out different jobs at different stages of different careers.
I think an important part of this process is giving yourself permission to answer the “What do you do” question honestly and without judgment of yourself. You shouldn’t feel like you have to pick a career and then spend your working life staying in your lane. And that’s where the ladder metaphor comes in.
I was speaking to a young man just starting out in the entertainment field. He knew he wanted to work in the business, but he wasn’t sure how exactly. He liked writing and being creative on his own, but he also enjoyed the business side of things, working in a group environment. He was interested in being a writer, and a producer, and an executive, and an agent.
The concern he shared with me was about choosing a career ladder to start climbing. How could he be sure that one of these ladders was really the one he wanted? He felt like he needed to know which ladder was right for him before he invested the time and energy necessary to start to advance up the rungs of his chosen career.
The career ladder. A classic metaphor. What makes sense about it to me is the idea that there are rungs on a ladder, just like there are levels of responsibility in a career.
For this young man, the career rungs were positions of responsibility: intern, assistant, manager, junior executive, associate vice president, senior vice president, president. What doesn’t make sense to me is that the ladder is an isolated concept that only represents one career path, as well as the fact that the higher up on the ladder you get, the harder it is to get off, much less switch ladders.
I could tell that this young man felt the same way without quite being able to verbalize it. We talked about how this ladder metaphor was flawed.
For starters, the idea of choosing from different career ladders implied that the choice of one eliminated the options of any of the others. Another flaw was the concept of climbing up the rungs, getting higher and higher up on the ladder, to the point where it was dangerous. This implies that if you fall from the ladder, you end up at the bottom of the ladder and have to start all over.
In addition, once you’re up there high enough on the ladder you can’t reach out and try climbing a different ladder. The higher up you go on the ladder, the harder it is to switch ladders. And the idea of climbing two ladders at once is in complete violation of basic ladder safety.
As we discussed the ladder metaphor and this young man’s hopes and fears regarding it, I started to think about a different metaphor for the professional career he was about to embark on. I feel like the concept of the career path makes more sense, but with the idea that these paths shouldn’t be thought of as individual, isolated choices.
I see his career path starting out in the same place as many of his contemporaries, but not as an isolated, independent route towards the end goal fo his chosen career. I encouraged him to avoid the tunnel vision that I had experienced in my professional life.
I broke in to the entertainment business as a comedy writer, and I was lucky to have enough success that it sustained me financially. My regret is that I had career blinders on that prevented me from seeing any other opportunities. I was so happy to have had success as a comedy writer, to have an identity that was a simple answer to the “What do you do?” question, that I lost all curiosity regarding any other career paths.
And thus, later on in my career when work had slowed down and I began to realize I wasn’t going to spend my whole life writing TV comedy, I found I didn’t have any other interests or opportunities I could immediately switch my focus towards. I was high up enough on my career ladder that it was scary to think about jumping over to another one. After years of climbing, it was a long way down if I fell!
So at that point in my life, I started testing the waters, reaching out to friends and contemporaries who worked in similar but different fields. As I did, I realized I wished I'd been doing this my whole career.
And that’s what I encouraged this young man to do. Instead of thinking about himself climbing rungs on a ladder, think about it as walking a path. And from this path, he will be able to see other paths similar to his, as well as the ability to examine these other paths as they pass near each other. Instead of being on a career ladder where, if he wants to switch to another career ladder he risks falling to the ground and having to start all over, he should think about it more like he has the ability to step onto another path as they cross and overlap.
How does this manifest in the real world? By being curious. During his work experience he’s going to run into people with similar but different career paths, and he should be curious about what their experiences are like, about where their paths started and how they have led them to this moment in time. Instead of having blinders on, focussing only on the path ahead of him, he should also be looking around him. Get out of the career path comfort zone and be curious about what other people do, because you might just find yourself interested in something you never thought you’d be interested in, but turns out to be the perfect career for you.
