Take your career in fast lane!

You might have read news items such as "More than 5-lakh appear for entrance tests competing for 50-60 IAS-seats" or "competing for 500-600 IIM-seats" or "IIT-seats", etc. 

IAS is Indian Administrative Services, IIM is Indian Institute of Management, and IIT is Indian Institute of Technology. Their global counterparts could be premier institutes such as HBS (Harvard Business School), INSEAD, etc.

Looking at such kind of news items many join the bandwagon without even caring to check suitability of corresponding professions in longer run. Some with plush jobs in campus placement thereafter find themselves landed into terrible trouble. In the midst of their careers they begin finding their jobs boring and wish to switch careers.

Why do jobs get boring?

During bouts of self-talk over a period of time, the so-called 'successful' careerists find 'something missing' in their 'plush' jobs in spite of a lot of money in it. They begin feeling underemployed although not underpaid. 

This happens because many a time careers get chosen on face-value of their 'lucrativeness' perceived from media's noise. Very few careers get chosen for the 'profile' that revolves around passion. Most get chosen for the 'pay-packet' without bothering about whether the job might turn out to be an enjoyment or a pain later. 

^ How should one choose a career?
^ Should one choose to be a politician, for instance, just because it appears lucrative?

^ Aren't there dimensions other than lucrativeness and 'pay-packet' that should be considered before shortlisting a typical career?

What are the relevant dimensions?

Every individual has some subtle individuality. It may be in terms of a melodiously timbered vocal chord, or an aptitude to mathematics or to orator-ship or passion to some form of art or a combination thereof.

Lucky are those who explore, exploit and enjoy while building their careers revolving around such individualities rather around their passions. Lucky are those who understand that lack of admissions in engineering, management, medicine, and corresponding premier institutes are not an end of the story. There are endless choices that go beyond such conventional narrow career-lanes.

A simple way to find a balance between passions and careers is to first of all find out what one is passionate about. Liking music or taking to it's thrilling beats for instance is different than being passionate about it. 

Passion is likely to be "what you 'love' doing" rather than what you 'like' doing. Eventually if 'what you like' does turn out to be a passion one must possess or be ready to develop proficiencies in the complimentary faculties to make a related career out of it. A passionate fellow about music should critically examine whether s/he is 'already good at' or is ready to put in the necessary hard-work (with smart-work of course) on cultivating her listening faculty or a melodious voice, etc. whatever may be her god-given 'possessions', into a required proficiency (developing & nurturing abilities or skills) to be a music-critic or a singer as a career respectively.

Even if the choice based on faculties does go wrong if at all, being passion-based, the extra efforts needed to convert those into capabilities and capacities might not be much boring. Passion is more likely to make the choice appear as a 'play' rather than as a 'work' or a 'job' (drudgery). Does anyone hesitate putting in heart-felt efforts on 'play-ground', for instance!

However much euphoric beginning it may be, a lucrative-career might wane over a period of time if the job is not passion-based. It may appear lucrative because of market-demand "what the world wants". It gets boring because it's not in-demand rather "not-loved" by self. So after a certain spell in the career, extra efforts called for by the market-demand appear like slogging. 

That's also may be a reason why human resource development (HRD) professionals find it difficult to motivate and align employees, howsoever they may try with the best-of-best pay-packets ("what the world is willing to pay you for"), towards the organisation's own passionate mission.

A couple of poetic lines ('Sher') by me on this in my mother tongue Marathi:
(One from you in English, Hindi or in a language of your choice is welcome)

असे ध्यास तर नसे तासनतास कामाचाही त्रास 

नसे ध्यास तर विषापरि असे अमृताचाही घास

A simple way to find out one's own passion/s is to engage in self-talk in order to zero-in on the activities that one enjoys;

- enjoys doing the most in spite of adversities and lack of appreciation from others,
- enjoys doing even at the cost of forgetting friends, family and food at times,
- enjoys continuously learning therefrom rather than getting bogged down by interim failures, if any, 
- enjoys performing them in newer ways while raising bar for one's own self,
- enjoys while finding ways-&-means to support them even if short of the required resources.

Knowing these dimensions, what steps does one take in order to make her job worthy and thereby shape her own career?

Steps to make 'work' worthy of 'play'ing

Step-1, Make commitment to choose career closely revolving around passion: "what you 'love' doing". Sometimes it may not be late to even switch the past so-called "liked" careers to the ones "you always loved" (and the ones that "the world 'wanted' and is willing to pay you for") particularly after the financial needs at that particular stage of life have been reasonably fulfilled. Be prepared to do so, even if some compromises are called for, both on your ego as well as on your current pay-packet at times.

Step-2, Zero-in on a couple of passions by a conscious self-talk. Key is in zeroing-in on them early enough. Psychometric tests may be useful in analysing your interests. Passions might be so subtle at times that only your parents, close friends, teachers and relatives might be in a better position to discover those. Unfortunately sometimes they tend to 'kill' those by 'advising' through smoke-glasses of their own successful or failed pasts or through (at times the 'self-taught') parental-conventions.

Step-3, Find out whether a couple of faculties complimentary to the short-listed passions pre-exist within. Are those faculties convertible into proficiencies, skills or Goal-abilities (my term for goal-oriented abilities) and thereby the corresponding passions convertible into careers?

Step-4, Without commensurate preparation passion has no destination. 

Put in the required hard-work and smart-work on cultivating the inherent faculties ("what you need to be good at" to do "what you love doing" in order to satisfy the "needs & wants of the world") into the Goal-abilities. Acquire additionally needed-ones if feasible. You may have to work over-time to do so. It's actually a fun-play working-out to heighten your abilities to suit the higher-level of your passion-oriented goals. While at the same time it's frustrating although may be easy to 'work' for the non-passion oriented lower-level goals.

Do SWOT analysis while nurturing with joy the chosen ones as above.

- Identity and polish your own corresponding strengths (S) if already possessed.
- Identity and overcome corresponding weaknesses (W), if any. It's important to allocate more energy on utilizing strengths rather than on overcoming weaknesses. The former is easier than the latter.
- Anticipate and tackle corresponding threats (T), if any.
- Anticipate and make use of every available opportunity (O) complementing the above process and in fact by being conscious to create some opportunities. 

If you are already employed, it might help greatly if you tune up above steps staying there itself in the same job until "the day" to do "what you love" with full throttle. There, in the current workplace, it may be easier to find out possible intersecting points between your interests and that of the current employer's. In that case, perhaps it might be easy for both you and your HRD to convert your current job into the one that you passionately loved and hence badly wanted. Instead, doing this by leaving the 'bird-in-hand' job might put you in tension ultimately resulting in loss of self confidence. Moreover, in the new job not only you may have to invest a lot of time establishing yourself with new "faces" but also you might get taken for granted there.

Step-5, Take an on-going review. Undertake a self-audit in order to check whether the chosen career is getting shaped as desired. Accordingly take corrective actions by going back to step-4 or step-1 as appropriate. 

A caveat: Being objective in deliverables might be more useful rather than merely being passionate and losing sight of the goals. 

Now-a-days people have been talking about IKIGAI as well, the Japanese concept (that means "a reason for being" or the very purpose of life), while planning careers. It may be practised in a structured manner with the steps and tips as elaborated above so as to take your career in right lane as well as to take it forward at a faster speed. 

Hope the tips help to attain the 'need-based' holistic satisfaction rather than mere 'want-based' monitory satisfaction. Former is long-term. Latter is short-term.

Footnotes:
Goal-abilities: Term coined by me for goal-oriented abilities. 

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

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