For years, I thought career management was about lining up the next job and trying to make all your jobs fit together in a series of logically-related experiences with increasing responsibility and accomplishments. I had a very non-linear path, but I did OK without doing any networking. When I got bored or frustrated in my job, I went to Craigslist and found a better one. I was sort of a serial monogamist worker.
My friends from high school followed a more traditional plan. Engineers, they started working for the Defense Department straight out of college and have moved up the ladder progressively over the past 18 years. I think that has worked out well for them, but very few people today can find a track like that.
I started following Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog about a year ago and while I don’t always agree with what she has to say, I think the following things are true:
- most of the time, it’s not about finding the next job, it’s asking yourself what you can do to make your current job better
- most of what makes a job good or bad is the environment you work in and how that job blends in with the rest of your life
How the job blends is the really revolutionary idea. A few months ago, twentysomething Ryan Healy posted this provactive piece on Brazen Careerist about how he doesn’t want a balance, he wants to blend everything together instead of creating work/life boundaries. More advice from Penelope followed for Gen-Yers to do all sorts of crazy things like take time off without asking. This stuff prompted an angry backlash from people who thought the suggestions were idiotic and dangerous–i.e. they could get you fired.
People are starting to think about how they can make their jobs complement their lives instead of figuring out how to climb the ladder. The reason I say managing your career is a political act is because so much of how our society functions is predicated on the assumption that most people will “keep their heads down,” and do what they are supposed to do, namely their jobs. We trade our time for money to provide security for our families. What if we
- decided that bargain sucked, and
- could actually do something about it?
We could cut back our hours of work and our lifestyle. That’s called simple living. But can you make the “work” side of that equation fulfilling enough? If you were a high powered attorney and loved it, but decided to move to a farm and raise goats…that might not be the best move.
We could become entrepreneurs and escape our cubicles. But if you think starting your own business will give you more time to be with your family, you are making a big mistake.
For most of us, these choices are too extreme and they paralyze us into doing nothing. That works out great for employers and politics because we are all too busy working to do anything else.
Let’s make room for things that matter. It’s not just about arranging work hours so you have more time with your kids, it’s about working in an environment where you can say, “I have to go pick up the kids; see ya later.” at 4pm and know that the people you work with are not going to be resentful and you will not get fired for being lazy. I could give many examples, but Penelope Trunk’s Yahoo Column gives some more ideas to stimulate thought…I say “stimulate thought” because these kind of ideas for ways to avoid work…that’s crazy talk according to the crowd of negative Yahoos who attack all these suggestions.
How can we make room for our lives in our work? Don’t get yourself fired over something stupid, but think about how you can take responsibility for the terms of your employment in a way that doesn’t accept the notion that your employer “owns” your time. Managing your career is not just about navigating from one job to the next but making an effort to get something more than just a paycheck, but perhaps less that total spiritual fulfillment from work.
Comments on this entry are closed.