About 4 years into my banking career I found myself in a huge dilemma.
I was pondering whether to continue pursuing my existing career or quit my job and pursue acting. It was an ‘A’ versus ‘B’ problem. Should I pick this option or that option?
My banking career was going extremely well at that time. I was Vice President, Strategic Business Management in retail banking at one of the largest banks in the world. I had a very promising and secure future there. The only problem was that I was wasn’t interested in that future.
On the other hand, I had just started taking some acting classes (if you don’t count theatre during elementary and junior high school) and acted in some student films. I had little experience and didn’t have an agent. And if there are any careers that are high risk, and have a high possibility of zero accomplishment, then acting definitely ranks top of the list. Along with tons of other artistic careers.
Going back and forth made me feel nervous and restless. I was never living in the moment. Whenever I had a free moment, this was all I could think about.
I was living in this alternate space where I was caught in between two options, neither of which was clearly a winner. Each option had its pluses and minuses. I wasted an enormous amount of energy and focus on this problem.
If you are in a similar situation, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know exactly how stressful it is. What makes the situation even more difficult is that other people, even close family, and friends don’t necessarily understand your problem. It’s not that they don’t want to help, but they can’t, because they don’t have access to the information that you have.
And I don’t claim to understand your specific dilemma either. You are the only one who completely understands it.
What I want to offer in this post are a few things that you need to avoid to deal with your dilemma better and faster.
But first, why do you need to deal with your dilemmas faster?
You need to end dilemmas as fast as you can because dilemmas rob you of your energy, focus, and presence.
But I need time to think about the pros and cons and to make a good decision!
True. To make the best decision you need a solid overview of your problem, an understanding of the risks and consequences. You need to gather these quickly, and then make your decision without further delay.
How fast? Fast – slow is relative. The more important and life-changing the decision is, the more time you’d spend, relatively speaking. But there is such a thing as spending too much time.
That’s when you already have all the elements I mentioned two paragraphs earlier, then go back and forth a million times for several years.
I must admit that it also took me quite a while to firm up my decision to leave my banking career. It took me almost a year. I was still young – and here, by young, I mean inexperienced in making big decisions. I didn’t know how to make decisions as well as I do know.
Now, after having made numerous life-changing decisions and dealt with the associated dilemmas, including getting married, making a feature film, moving countries, going back to school, going full-time on youtube, etc., I’ve gotten better at identifying and getting out of dilemmas faster.
So no matter what age you are now if you feel you’re having a really hard time with your dilemma, it might be encouraging to hear that with each dilemma it will get easier and faster.
There are several things that cause a dilemma.
First, there are obvious reasons.
Let’s look at the definition of a dilemma according to Wikipedia: “A dilemma is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable….”
The key here is that neither of the two possibilities is unambiguously acceptable or preferable.
In the case of an extreme career change, that means that both staying (Option A) and making the career change (Option B) have upsides and downsides, and it’s very hard to identify a definite winner.
In my case, the upsides of staying were a fast-paced career, a quickly growing salary and bonus package, immense learning opportunities, while the downsides were among others an industry I didn’t like and crazy working hours.
The most obvious upside of leaving banking and pursuing an acting career was spending my precious time doing what I enjoyed, while the downside was the high possibility that I wouldn’t achieve anything at all and end up waitressing. More about how I made my decision, in another post.
Whatever industry you are thinking to move into, there might be similar things that are going through your mind. Pros and cons related to income, learning, interests, and so on. And these are all good things to consider to arrive at a good decision.
But then there are things that you need to leave out of the equation. Things that distort your decision-making and unnecessarily prolong your dilemma.
Here are 5 thoughts and thought processes that prolong your dilemma. That makes it last much longer than it has to. These 5 mindsets will keep you caught up in indecision, and that’s why you need to scrap these as fast as you can.
I’ll go through these 5 mindsets briefly and will break them down in more detail in separate posts.
- I don’t want my education and career to go to waste
You’ve spent 4 years studying graphic design and worked as a graphic designer for 7 years. Now you want to make an extreme career change to become a software engineer. But you think that by doing this, your first education and all the long hours you’ve worked as a graphic designer will have gone to waste.
Let’s just assume for a moment that everything has indeed gone to waste. If what you want is to be a software engineer, if that is your northern star, then why would you let something that you’ve done in the past influence you?
You cannot change what has already happened, but at least don’t let it affect your future.
If you engage with this kind of thinking, it means that you have adopted the ‘sunk cost fallacy’.
2. I’ll have to start all over again
You think that to become a software engineer you’ll have to start from zero again.
It’s true that you have to start the journey towards becoming a software engineer from the beginning. But if you zoom out a bit, you’ll realize that you’re not going to start from zero. There are things you’ve learned and experienced during your time as a graphic engineer that you’ll be able to use in your new career: transferable skills. You might not be aware of the value of these yet, but trust me, in 5 years from now, looking back you’ll be able to pinpoint this.
3. If I start now, I’ll keep falling behind the others
You might think, ‘Okay, I’m not really starting from zero. But I am behind the other and will always fall behind because I’m late to the game.
Not only is this not true, but there are also countless examples where people started something new in their later years and became more successful than other people in the same field.
But that aside, more important is to focus on yourself. If you keep comparing your career with others’, you lost the race. When you’re running a race, the worst thing you can do is look back and forth to your competitors. Once in a while, it’s beneficial to do this, but you really gotta reign in it.
If your main worry is ‘by the time I’ve finished my boot camp in coding, my friend will have been already promoted to Head of Advertising’ or something along those lines, you’ll never get out of your dilemma.
Things that have nothing to do with you and things you can’t influence should never be considered.
4. What will I tell my (fill in the blanks) what the hell I’m doing?
This is one of the most useless thoughts someone can have. There is not a single ounce of usage in this thinking.
I have struggled with this thought, but it’s become weaker and weaker over the years.
When I handed in my resignation letter to my boss, I was so embarrassed to say that I would pursue acting, that I just blurted out something else. Surprisingly, my boss replied ‘At least it’s not banking!’, which did make me giggle inside.
It’s natural to worry about what to tell other people, what they will think about your decision, and what they’ll think about you as a person. But those are things to worry about later, after you’ve made your decision, after you’ve escaped your dilemma, instead of during your process. These thoughts will only cloud your judgment.
5. If I leave this career, I will miss out on so many opportunities
This is how the thought goes: If I leave the advertising industry now, I will never do a campaign for a famous brand and I’ll miss out on that promotion I should be getting in 6 months’ time.
Here, you are settling for less. You are trying to maximize the gains from a cause you no longer believe in.
What you want is to work in software engineering, but you are still trying to recover gains from a world you don’t want to be in anymore.
It’s natural that human beings want to cling to what seems safe and familiar. But here lies a false assumption that there is safety in staying put. Nothing is safe, nothing is certain. Planned business deals can be broken, a promotion can fall through.
If the results of option A and option B are both uncertain, then why not go for the one that is more fulfilling and meaningful? Why even consider a positive future outcome of an option that you are not interested in as a benefit, to begin with?
Take this train of thought out of your equation. Don’t cling to scraps of opportunities.
No matter if you’re in a dilemma of:
- Moving to another country/city or staying where you are,
- Starting a business or remain an employee,
- Change majors after your 4th semester or stay put,
Get rid of the 5 mindsets I mentioned above. It will be much easier to escape the dilemma and make a good decision.
