I should work on my career. Why don’t I?
Working to further our careers, by definition, pushes us beyond our comfort zone. It triggers uncomfortable emotions: behavioral blockers that get in the way of true progress.
Two months ago, after much reflection on whether to open a new chapter in my career, I zeroed in on an intense and brainy industry, and laid out the next 3 career actions: 1) Researching alums in the venture capital world and reaching out, 2) Reading a book about the industry, 3) Writing down a list of areas I could confidently help companies of various sizes with, given my consulting experience.
While I eventually did all three, I procrastinated way more than was necessary. From discussions with friends and behavioral research, I knew it was an all-too-common issue. Evolutionary biases are keeping us from taking the actions we know to be right to grow our careers.
There are three biases that impacted my response over and over again in past year, as I was working through my own transition:
Certainty bias: We naturally find comfort—as in, the brain fires pleasant chemicals—in pursuing the best-understood option. Conversely, when we don’t know what to do next or can’t predict the outcome of a situation, our brain responds with fear. Career exploration and decision-making are inherently uncertain; information is imperfect on all sides and the payoff unclear. The risks, however, are easily articulated.
Negativity bias: We are evolutionarily wired to over-index on negative emotions. When we face a setback, our inner critic kicks into gear, and it becomes incrementally harder to set out to do that same activity again. We need to get out there and accept a level of rejection in the pursuit of growth.
Mere urgency effect: We often put the urgent in front of the truly important. We have busy lives and only so much emotional and mental capacity. Whatever is most noisy, most visible, is likely to capture our attention on any given day. Career navigation, or finding one’s purpose, decidedly needs a clear mind, yet it always seems to fall in the background.
How I found myself responding to these mental biases
With the benefit of hindsight, I can frame my instinctual response into 4 sequential steps. I now see how each became increasingly productive in actually revealing and resolving the impasse of wanting a career change:
Avoidance: The most instinctual response is to treat the situation like most other stressors, or what we perceive as a threat: fight or flight. For me, this meant staying in a comfortable role for just a little longer, not taking the actions that I know were needed to explore and pursue fulfillment. It’s easier instead to make positive yet incremental moves while avoiding tackling real underlying sources of the impasse.
Reaction: When the discomfort becomes too much, we can make knee-jerk decisions. We may call it “ripping off the band-aid”. The pain is short-lived and propels us in an opposite direction that temporarily alleviates the malaise. In my case, I was lucky enough to plan and take a long leave of absence, purposefully creating time and space for quiet reflection and exploration. While the reflection turned out a lot richer than anticipated, there wasn’t as much exploration as intended, as the problem hadn’t yet fully revealed itself.
Reframing: Reframing can happen when awareness grows. It is the mental exercise of observing the discomfort and redirecting the energy towards a productive endeavor, or “thinking about it differently.” Recognizing the need, I started building a version of my personal ikigai, using a variety of tools to think logically about existing skills and passions, lived experiences, life and career goals at different horizons, personal constraints, all mapped against realistic outside needs for talent. What came out of this exercise was a desire to put myself out there and reckon with what I can bring to organizations while doing something I know well and enjoy. In parallel, I wanted a new challenge and decided to explore what could become a new inflection in my career, researching the venture capital world.
Acceptance: This is the process of learning to let go: sitting with a level of discomfort, and engaging with uncertainty for an extended time—launching a newsletter, exploring venture creation! And being comfortable telling the countless people who ask what I do: “I’m figuring it out.” The discomfort is both a sign of growth itself (I’m doing something new) and an intuition worth listening to. Acceptance is not a passive process, quite the opposite. It required me actively engaging with serendipitous encounters (in particular the wonderful Grace and Vince), pursuing activities outside my comfort zone (writing this very post 😬), pausing my habitual responses, and making a deliberate choice to listen.
There’s a better way
One hypothesis behind the People Renaissance is that we can recognize these moments of questioning earlier, and offer support from the beginning of the journey. The intention is to reduce the mental and emotional churn, and move to productive outcomes faster.
This isn’t a quest to eliminate all uncertainty and discomfort. One needs to voluntarily tear muscle tissue for it to grow stronger, and get the heart pumping to eventually increase endurance. Similarly, I’ve observed in myself and heard from others that personal career growth happens when I:
First, recognize the impasse, allow it to exist without harsh judgment, identify the triggers (e.g., boredom, burnout, external trauma). Avoidance would still exist, but its power upon us diminishes when it is exposed.
Embrace discomfort as an intuitive, introspective invitation to dig deeper, rather than a threat to bury, fight, or run away from.
Only then, take active steps to reflect and explore: creating space, talking to others, engaging in both structured and unstructured questioning. With this new frame, I hope to skip looking for roles that I could fit into, and instead find or create ones that fit me.
Because it goes contrary to our natural response, it takes practice and patience to flip the script and train new neural pathways. Hope is not our evolutionary response to disruption: it has to be learned and cultivated.
Ray Dalio’s wrote in an insightful note following the tragic passing of his son last month: “I had long ago internalized the belief that pain + reflection = progress so my instinct is to observe myself and my circumstances in painful situations, reflect on them, and write down those reflections to refer to in the future.”
I’d love to hear from your experience
How have you intuitively responded to your last career impasse or disruption?
What got you towards acceptance and productive growth?
Next time, how could you recognize faster what is happening?
Drop us a line or let us know in the comments!
Thanks for breaking down these biases and responses. Very relatable!
I can relate to all of this.
With regards to your 3rd tip, " take active steps to reflect and explore," two things that have really helped me on that front: establishing a daily meditation practice, and spending time alone in nature.