Hey there fellow Apprentices,
This week’s co-authored piece is written alongside
, who writes , which is a rolling blog of anthropological observations about everyday life and social issues in the U.S. Basically it’s popular social science thinking for curious folks.Today we discuss how you know when a career is over and that you need to start a new one. We draw on the 3 careers James has already experienced as a cultural anthropologist, corporate market researcher and now part-time consultant part-time author.
Death of Your Personality
Your career is not your life.
It’s one part of the bigger picture. How you spend your mornings, evenings and weekends are important elements of the greater all-encompassing YOU.
If your career prevents you from forming an identity and a love of life beyond the work itself, it’s time to reassess whether it’s the path for you. Occasionally working late and weekends is necessary. But, if you’re relentlessly sacrificing the enjoyment of any short-term pleasure for the promise of only long-term rewards that move further away each year, you need to come to the realisation that you might be dead before you get any semblance of life back.
Sometimes your personal life intersects with your professional life. When work is the hobby you’d do in your spare time anyway. This can be wonderful. But, it can also be a tragedy waiting to happen. The mundane reality of your hobby as work can kill your love for it. Especially when it encompasses your entire identity and being.
So, when you feel like your only answer to “who are you…?” is your job title, it’s time to take a step back and reassess. Is there more to life for you than just your work? Are your other interests compatible with your day-to-day?
Cons Far Outweigh the Pros
When in doubt post-it note it out.
Find a wall. Add “PROs” to one wall. Add “CONs” to the other. Knock back a couple of beers to remove your filter on life. Then give yourself five minutes to add all the for and against arguments for staying in your current career onto the two lists in-front of you.
If, like James you find yourself with 12 cons and only 2 pros (with one being the sunk cost of time invested), to stay in a profession like academia this should be ringing alarm bells in your ears. If the two lists are somewhat equal you could argue for the weighting of different post-it notes. But, when it’s so blindingly clear there is no room for doubt.
The key here is honesty with yourself. Avoid inviting in a friend to shape, criticise and object to your ideas. Do it alone. For it’s the only way you’ll discover answers that are true to who you are. With a bit of luck it could be the “Aha” moment you’ve been looking for to make the decision to change.
You’ve Reached Breaking Point
If one day you can no longer drag yourself out of bed and your doctor has labelled you clinically depressed it definitely time to re-evaluate.
James has only ever had three such episodes in his life. Each developing slowly over a several months and then suddenly all at once. It was clear to him that something was very wrong. That he needed to take action to claim back the joy of life that was missing.
In retrospect the root cause is obvious. But, this isn’t the cause we’re immediately drawn to in the moment. Even when our body is screaming at us that something is wrong, identifying what is causing the pain can be a struggle. Especially when we’ve sold ourselves a story that we’re so lucky to have the career we do today. That we should just shut up, be grateful, and get on with it. It’s a dangerous narrative that will only lead to unhappiness in the long term.
When we’re faced with a body shutdown on the scale of depression, we need to take a step back. To bring in our friends as soundboards, assess our life as a whole and realise that what’s important to us has probably changed. That today’s life shouldn’t be tied to yesterday’s decisions. Only then can we find the strength to choose whether our existing career is already over.
But, for many they never quite reach this breaking point. Instead they find themselves trapped in career of increasing mediocrity without the skills to take the decision to jump ship. Sometimes it takes an external event like a round of redundancies to force them into action, other times they continue to cruise through a middling life, never questioning their careers.
To avoid staying too long in a career that is no longer right for you, be proactive about it’s alignment. Overcome the sunk cost fallacy by realising that your time invested is not wasted. It’s accumulated to be stacked alongside your next career to give you a unique perspective on the world that only you could have. One that will both earn you more and teach you more than you could have ever imagined.
This is only our experience though… Have you ever transitioned from one career to another one? How did you know it was the right time?