My favorite spot in a cafe is at the window. I love sipping my coffee while looking at passersby. Once in a while, I notice a grumpy-looking 40 or 50-year-old in the crowd. Frown lines sunken deep into her cheeks, looking like brackets around the bright lipstick, or a blank expression on his tired face that tells he’s given up on whatever dreams he might have had.
You might have seen these kinds of people and know what I mean. If you see this in your own reflection after a long exhausting day at work, you know even better.
It hurts to know that you’re not living the life you want. And seeing how it adds 10 years to your face just makes you want to hide.
This is the portrait of a person who knew something was wrong with their life. That they were wasting time working in a job they didn’t care about, but never attempted to change it.
At the start of every new year, they would tell themselves that they’d leave their job and pursue something more meaningful and fulfilling. But then they got sucked into meetings and endless to-dos at work and broke their promise to themselves.
And so another year went by with no change. Stuck in the same dead-end career.
Don’t let this happen to you.
The source of my motivation to create content is to keep you from withering away in a career that’s just not for you.
I’ve been there. For 5 long years, I worked as a project manager in the banking industry. After my first year, I had an inkling I was in the wrong place. It was as if I were wearing blinders. You know those flaps used to cover horses’ eyes so they would stay focused on what’s right in front of them.
At first, it just didn’t occur to me that I had options. Anyway, I made it out just in time. Many of my colleagues never left the rat race.
There are two gigantic problems in leaving your career. You need to get a grip on these if you ever want to make a meaningful career change.
They are self-imposed problems that most humans experience: Lifestyle inflation resulting in corporate dependency, and a twisted sense of time.
So let’s talk about how we mess up our perception of time and how that keeps people from changing careers.
Think of your favorite show. When we watch Netflix, we never think that we lack time. At first, I was reluctant to watch ‘Squid Games’, the South Korean survival drama. But then I peeked into the first episode and went on to finish all 9 episodes in 2 days. That’s how I spent my precious weekend getaway in an Airbnb cabin in the beautiful village of Port Credit. And I’m not even the worst offender. Millions of people spend 5 hours or more each day binge watching.
Getting glued to screens is not the point here. It’s how we act as though we have all the time in the world when we’re sitting on the couch consuming entertainment. We manage to carve out 3-5 hours per day, or 90-150 hours per month, or 1,080-1,800 hours per year on something that yes, can be inspiring, thrilling, or heartwarming, but doesn’t make a dent in our quest for a more meaningful life and career.
Even though we have all this surplus time to re-watch ‘Friends’, we firmly believe that we lack the time to launch a new career. We can’t spare 10 minutes to read about the requirements to get started in a new field. There’s no time to look into the career path that might bring fulfillment. We don’t have time to ask an acquaintance for advice to get started in their industry.
It’s too overwhelming. It’s too anxiety-inducing. So let’s just let it be.
We don’t trust that our efforts will amount to anything. We believe that at this age <fill in the blanks>, it’s already too late to start a new career. Things take too much time and might not be worth the risk. Another justification for accepting the status quo.
It’s too easy to think along these lines, “Not enough time”.
Had I thought that way, I wouldn’t be here writing this blog post for you.
Every time when things didn’t go the way I wanted, I would tell myself, “You can change the course of your career in a matter of hours, or even minutes. It just takes a decision and change of mind.”
Don’t get me wrong. You cannot get results in a matter of hours, or even weeks. But you can change your trajectory and the direction in which you move in a matter of minutes.
The recipe: Do less of what you hate, and more of what you like. Go west, instead of east. Stop getting deeper embedded into the career you abhor and start loosening yourself from it. Spend more time exploring things that are meaningful to you.
If you keep at it, results will follow. Perhaps in 1 year, or 3 years. Maybe you’ll progress in snail tempo. But isn’t 3 years better than never?
How can change your view of time? How can you toss the belief that it’s too late to change careers?
Consider the two following points and write them down somewhere. If you don’t have a physical notebook or journal, make some notes on your phone.
Hold on to these 2 things, as they will change your perspective on time and help you finally change your career.
Percentage of Career Life Ahead
Please follow me in doing a simple calculation. I will use an example to show this concept.
Remember the age at which you first started working. Let’s say that’s 23. Now pick an age at which you’ll want to retire. For this example, we’ll use the typical age of 67 years. Your total career life would be 67-23 = 44 years.
Let’s say you’re 32 years old now. Your career life ahead is the number of years you still have to achieve all the things you want to in your career. Here, it’s 67-32 = 35 years (I’m advocating to stretch the time beyond 67, but that’s a topic for another time).
We’ll now calculate two key indicators:
Percentage of career life past: This is the percentage of time you’ve already worked your ass off, in a probably unfulfilling, or less than ideal career. Here, it’s 32-23 = 9 years. Divide 9 years by 44 and you’ll get 20.5%.
Percentage career life ahead: This is the percentage of time you still have ahead of you to pursue the most fulfilling career you can. Here, it’s 35/44 = 79.5%
This means so far you’ve only used up 20.5% of your time experimenting with a career that perhaps didn’t work out. But you still have a big chunk of 79.5% left, which is 4 times what you’ve already spent, to get onto the right track.
Calculate these 2 percentages for yourself and imprint them into your mind. The next time you think “It’s already too late”, remember how much career life ahead you still have.
Proof of Accomplishments
I have to consciously remind myself of the things I’ve achieved in the past. Whether that’s making 2 feature films in just 3 years, getting multiple promotions in 5 years, or growing my YouTube channel to generate passive income–it’s crazy how I keep forgetting and depreciating it.
There’s a solution to this. Since a few years ago, I’ve made it a habit to review how far I’ve come. At the end of the year or start of the new year, I pull out a review template and write about what happened in the last 10 years.
I’m like a child opening a toy box, surprised to find what I’ve accumulated. Every time I remind myself of the things I’ve accomplished, I get super motivated.
Under your ‘career life ahead’ percentages, write down 3 significant accomplishments you are proud of, and how long it took you. This could be getting a promotion, carrying out a project, earning a degree, writing a book, or whatever.
This list is PROOF that you can accomplish meaningful things in just 3 years, or even months.
There is nothing that can motivate you more than your own accomplishments. It is evidence that you can bring about change, do hard things, and take risks.
You can watch countless motivational videos that show other people achieving impossible feats. But what does that have to do with you? The source of your motivation has to come from your own experience.
If you achieved meaningful things in the past, there is no reason you can’t achieve a difficult goal in the future.
Doing something new is scary and risky. But think of the thing you accomplished years ago. How scary and risky did it seem? How full of uncertainty and anxiety-inducing was it?
Anything meaningful I achieved in the past was nerve-wracking. And yet, somehow, I pulled through.
Dig into your past and collect proof of what you can accomplish.
Now let’s take these facts into the future. Think of the change you’re trying to make in your career. Perhaps you want to move into a different role in the same industry. Or make a complete career change that requires you to go back to school.
Whatever it is, it will seem unbelievably challenging and almost impossible. By default, your mind will look for reasons you cannot do it, why it’s too late, and why you shouldn’t bother trying.
That’s when you take out your notes and look at your ‘career life ahead’, to remind yourself that you still have double, or triple the time you’ve already spent on your career so far, to set things right. Also, review your proof that within a short time, you can pull off crazy things.
In the comments: Did you do the calculations and collect your proof? How did it change your perspective of time? I would love to know how you’re going to change your career this year. Sometimes it only takes a minuscule shift in perspective to get things rolling!
