Job boxes, career paths, and the value of hindsight

You know those pop-up memories that you get sent by Facebook or Google photos?

Yesterday, Facebook told me that it’s been 7 years since I graduated with my Masters in the UK. It’s been interesting to reflect on that passage of time, and to see how life has changed. (The key parts – 2 kids and way more grey hair haha!).

But more broadly than that, I’ve been reflecting on how much easier it is to form a narrative about your life when you’re looking back, than when you’re looking forward.

Where is my box?

I’m not sure where you’re at in your career, but in my own life, I’ve found it difficult to be… narrow enough.

At age 10, I wanted to be a hockey player, tennis player, a conservationist and a singer.

In my 20s I did a conjoint which didn’t point clearly to any particular job or industry.

I had plans to write a thesis about the medicalisation of the human condition. Or maybe about whether all-girls schools are associated with higher rates of anxiety. Or…

For a long time I felt deficient because I had too many ‘ors’. I didn’t have a clear box to define myself with, and say “I’m Renee and I’m an X”.

Struggling to find just one box to define you?

And the lack of a box, or a clearly defined path, meant that I went on some “detours”. For instance – I got my first job out of uni because my dad met a man on a golf course who said they were looking to hire science graduates who could write. How’s that for an ad-hoc job search process?

But looking back, it’s clear that no experience is ever wasted. That first job wasn’t for me – but I met some lovely people and I learned about randomised trial design, which I now use in my day job.

It’s like every experience gives you a little gift – but sometimes you’re not aware of it. A sleight-of-hand magician slips the gift into your pocket when you’re not looking, and you only find it when you’re down the road a little ways, and looking back, and remembering.

Or maybe, in the moment, you realise that you’re in the wrong role, the wrong relationship, the wrong city, whatever. In those moments it’s easy to self-blame, and to compare yourself to other people who seem to have it all together and who never go off track. But – a couple of rebuttals to that harsh inner critic. If you get closer to those people who have it all together, you’ll probably get a more accurate view of reality. Plus, just for yourself –

there are very few things that count as a wasted experience. In lion tracking, they talk about ‘the path of not here’. And that’s still information right?

The fact that you are off-track indicates that there is something like a track that could be found. You can get yourself closer to the track. No information is wasted, it’s all data, it all points in a direction that’s useful.

Enabling language and fusing boxes

George Orwell helped us to realise that the language we use shapes the way that we think, and the possibilities that we can imagine. When it comes to finding a rewarding career, it’s been lovely to see how we’ve added to our language, rather than implying that everyone should fit into a neat little job box.

For instance, Marie Forleo talks about people who are ‘multi-hyphenate’ – who have a range of skills to offer, and who don’t want to narrow themselves down to one box. More traditionally we had ‘polymaths’, though the bar for using that term feels veeeery high!

Business commentators note the rise of the T-shaped professional – who has a breadth of skills, with deep expertise in a small number of areas.

There’s the ‘side hustle’, which helps to legitimise people’s passion projects. And then there’s Stephen Fry’s amazing quote about being a verb rather than a noun:

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun” (Stephen Fry).

I remember feeling hugely liberated when I picked up a self-help book in an opshop in Rotorua, and it said that there is value in being a person who doesn’t fit into a neat box. There is value in sitting across many boxes, and seeing the patterns. Like the fact that almost every client struggles with collaboration. That every employee wants to feel psychologically safe and valued. That everyone feels overworked, and that they need to have clearer boundaries.

There’s this common concept in behavioural science, that you should ‘go with the grain’ of human nature. So if you don’t fit neatly into a box, go with that. I can almost guarantee that the parts of you that don’t fit neatly into a box, are the parts where you add the most value.

Like how Patch Adams brought comedy into medicine. Or how Jamie Oliver brought activism into cooking. That’s box fusion, and it works. It’s valuable.

Demystifying the experts

One other thing I’ve realised recently is that people who have risen to lofty heights in their careers, often didn’t have a plan. They just followed the breadcrumb trail, one step at a time, like we all have to.

Case in point – one of my main lecturers for my Masters was Paul Dolan. He used to be a health economist, working out things like the quality-adjusted life years gained by different treatments, and the trade-offs between different types of public spending on healthcare. Then he went to a conference, and sat on a bus next to Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning behavioural economist. They chatted, Paul became interested in behavioural science, and he entered into a new phase of his career. Because of where he sat on a bus.

Think about all the randomness in your life, that conspired to get you where you are now. A former colleague met her husband because he asked her for directions to the ferry terminal. Off he went, but then she was concerned that he would miss the boat. So she drove him to the ferry - and now they’re married with kids.

Life is utterly full of randomness, some of it amazing, some of it gut-wrenching. Careers are part of life, and therefore, also subject to randomness. That’s not to say that you don’t have agency, and you can’t shape your career in important ways. But where you ‘end up’ is a function of many variables, including luck and random chance.

From speaking with people who are well-established and happy in their careers, the best advice seems to be – move towards things that you find interesting, and that make you feel alive. As Howard Thurman put it,

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Who’s Howard Thurman? Just a classic multi-hyphenate. An author, educator, philosopher, theologian and civil rights leader.

Going into the Christmas break

Christmas is nearly here (which is insane), and once the gifts are given and you’re overstuffed with holiday meals, it’s a good time to look back on your last few years. Are you feeling on track or on ‘the path of not here’? Where are the little breadcrumbs that are leading you forward? Are there any gifts in your pocket – from your current role, from Covid, or from life more generally – gifts that you didn’t really notice until now? And are you happily content in a box, or do you need to get a bit of box-fusion going, so that the world can more fully appreciate all the things you have to offer?

That’s quite a range of metaphors hey. But I didn’t want to narrow it down. That would be off-brand haha! Seriously though, the idea of the career box, and even the career path, is a social construct. It’s good to feel like you have a place, and like you’re moving forward. But you don’t need a well-defined box or a clear path to be an effective human. Nobody puts baby in a corner, and nobody should put you in a box. Including you.

xx Renee from Thrive Lab