Hi friends,
I hope everyone in the US had a supremely lovely holiday, whether it was with family, chosen family/friends, or in solitude, because sometimes that is real nice too. It’s jarring to get back to work after a FOUR day weekend in which email/work demands are relatively dormant. (WHY does this only happen consistently across the country for a single day of the year?)
If you’re reading this in Canada, I hope you’re enjoying the homestretch of the year, and fresh snow (I’m going to sound like a real California jerkface right now, but I often miss snow and change in seasons to signify the end of the year). I went with a friend and his two adorable kiddos to pick out a Christmas tree this weekend, and between walking around, wheeling the tree and chasing kids around - everyone was sweating profusely through jackets, and that felt weird and not that festive.
This week, I’ll continue sharing some thoughts on career switching. Studies across the board are highlighting how the pandemic is making people want to switch jobs. Depending on which study you read, somewhere between a quarter and a third of people say the pandemic has made them completely reevaluate their career.
It makes sense… in the first part of 2021, as we emerged from the worst part of the pandemic, we just wanted things to feel normal again. Then, as we regained some normalcy, we started thinking about how to operationalize some of the reflections we had during the pandemic about things that deeply mattered to us. Maybe we wanted more time at home with our loved ones, maybe we wanted to be in a different city. Even if we didn’t come to a groundbreaking epiphany during COVID, it’s likely we all felt some pent-up desire to try something new.
It’s not surprising, that the percentage of people that want to completely pivot their careers is higher in younger people (under 40 to be exact). This also rationally makes sense:
it’s become more common and culturally acceptable in the last decade to skip around to different jobs
typically switching jobs earlier in life isn’t accompanied by a laundry list of structural considerations (kids, schools, benefits)
the opportunity cost is lower (you’re not giving up a title, a certain salary)
younger job seekers have more proximity/access to new industries and roles (for example, ‘social media manager’ was not a well-known role even five years ago. NOW there are hundreds of thousands of roles across platforms, with different specializations
Many barriers exist to choosing *any* job. There’s psychologically what we deem possible/acceptable by societal standards, and tactically, our day to day obligations. In fact, it’s almost impossible to think about what you want to do in your ‘dream career’ without immediately asking yourself questions like ‘but I don’t have the skillset’, ‘how much would that pay?’ ‘People would judge me for that’.
To be fair, I’ve always tried to retain some modicum of pragmatism with this newsletter. The interwebs certainly does not need one more uncertified “life coach” telling you to listen to your inner calling and chase your passion. In that regard, I really do believe there are real tradeoffs and considerations in choosing to do what we love, and what we can actually get paid/valued to do.
In this post I wrote in June about purpose, one very critical component of the venn diagram is in fact, “What you can get paid for”.
However, when we feel super stuck in our jobs and routines, and yearn for change and excitement - I think a useful exercise is to reconnect with our interests and passions.
Notice, I used the word “reconnect”, not “find”…
When we think about inspiration, common advice often asks us to project into the future. “What’s your ten year plan?” “Do you want your boss’s job?” But I think there’s a part of us that intrinsically knows things that we like and what we’re interested in, and has always known - and it’s valuable to look back into our past. Before we learned what was ‘acceptable’, ‘lucrative’, or even possible in terms of careers, as kids, we all had interests/inclinations and bold proclamations on what we wanted to be when we “grew up”. (Hence this week’s subject line… whenever I hear “When I Grow Up”, I instantly think of this earworm of a song:)
Obviously, it’s unlikely for many of us to make a wholesale career switch from our current jobs to what we wanted to be as a kid (especially if you aspired to be a professional athlete or rockstar)… but what are the values and feelings associated with our kid aspirations? Can we tap into those more in our existing job? Can we seek more of those things in our next job?
Musings
What are the first ideas you had on what you wanted to be when you grew up? Where did it come from? My guess is that you were heavily influenced by parents.
Other models for what we want to be extend further than our parents, perhaps to other influential adults in our orbit. And of course, we learn from pop culture; our role models might have been professional athletes or popstars.
But often, even as kids, alongside the external influences, we likely had an element of intrinsic knowing as well. There are likely certain things we gravitated towards, things that we sat still doing, losing ourselves in for hours on end.
As a kid, my earliest recollection of wanting to have a specific job was 100% influenced by my aunt. She was hands down my favourite family member. She was always the kindest, most patient with me and my favourite person to hang out with when we’d visit China as a kid. I idolized her and wanted to be her, knowing very little about what she did for a living. All I knew was she was a doctor who helped patients, and once I learned and practiced the pronunciation a few times, at the tender age of 3, I announced to a dinner table full of adults:
Turns out, in addition to being real nice (and always having snacks), my aunt also happened to be a leading OB/GYN in China and worked on pioneering IVF research and development (which is pretty groundbreaking, considering she practiced during an era that still enforced the one child policy). All I knew was that her title was gynecologist, and vaguely that she helped people through medicine, and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. Adult influences matter… and when I reflect on it now, I think I really admired her demeanour, her empathy and how mission-driven she was in her career, all of which I learned about well after the age of 3.
The second job I distinctly remember wanting: hosting a cooking show. Not being a chef, not owning a restaurant - but very specifically, hosting a cooking show. Like the example with my aunt, maybe this wasn’t modelled entirely off an intrinsic desire, rather based on extrinsic examples.
Listen, maybe you idolized Wayne Gretzy, I was more of a “Yan Can Cook” kid.
Looking back on it now, I think watching cooking shows with my dad and my grandma was always a source of comfort. My parents tell me I used to act out cooking shows at the kiddie pool, using the various buckets/toys as stand-ins for kitchen tools, instead of playing with other kids (mega only child alert). I didn’t (and don’t currently) actually love cooking, but I loved the element of teaching and simplifying things, and maybe to some extent, doing it for an audience.
And finally. The third job I remember having was a little bit later in life, was being a financial news journalist. The most obvious role model:
And even later in life, Sloan Sabbith on the Newsroom
Back in the heyday of cable news, anchors were a calming nightly presence in the family home, explaining chaotic events, simplifying complex concepts… they sounded smart and had a lot of responsibility.
(Side note: as I think back through these examples, I realize exactly how incredibly freaking important representation is in mainstream culture… It’s not coincidental that my career role models were all Asian or Asian-American. Even when I was very young and didn’t know anything about salaries or titles, I gravitated toward people who me and my family resembled.)
While all of this was a very fun trip down memory lane, I initially wrote it off as somewhat useless in actual career path determination because, GUESS WHAT? I did not become the host of a financial news/cooking show hybrid while delivering babies in my spare time. But I started thinking about what made these jobs appealing as a kid, and what makes these jobs appealing still - and it made me realize that part of the reason I feel content in my career nowadays, is because it taps into some of these intrinsic, childlike interests and values I had even as a kid.
I don’t deliver babies, but I work for a healthcare fund that has a broader mission of improving patient outcomes, and increasing access to care.
I don’t anchor the nightly news, but I spend a lot of my time translating financial content and crafting narratives and strategies around our investments and companies.
I don’t have a cooking show, but I have this little newsletter in which I share fun little step-by-step segments with people.
And conversely, when I think back to points in my career that I’ve been unhappy, its been when some of these values and interests have been stymied. When I don’t feel like there’s an obvious mission, or when I feel like I don’t really get to play a part in crafting a story.
I’d love to hear from you if you do this exercise/trip down memory lane - what insights did you uncover about how your current role and career are aligned with your childhood interests?
Conversations
I threw the question out there to people in my network that seem to really like their jobs - i.e. they aren’t currently looking to leave. I asked them what they wanted to be when they were little, and if any of those traits existed in their current role.
SPOILER ALERT: Nobody knew exactly what they wanted to be as a kid and followed through exactly. That is rare, and in some cases… alarming. I once went on a date with a man who told me (proudly) he dressed as an investment banker for Halloween at age 12 and carried on to become a VP….
ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT: Nobody actually became exactly what they wanted to be at age six (though I really do wish I had actual real-life astronauts in my friend group.)
Similar to my experience, the exercise helped some of them reconnect with their core values and interests, and somewhat connect the dots with how these values and interests were showing up in their roles.
“As a kid, I was fascinated by weather, and especially loved watching/reading about hurricanes. I didn’t become a meteorologist, I ended up becoming an investment banker for all the reasons you’d think (stability, graduating pre-financial crisis).
As I think through it now, there in some ways, hurricanes are a bit like deals - they’re large scale, chaotic, and take a while to build in momentum.. strategizing and planning to contain the chaos is imperative, and then its calm after.”
“All I remember wanting to do as a kid (and I would tell people this), is to rule the world, though I didn’t really think too hard about it. Just leaned into the things I liked - writing, math, literature.
I guess now (as a product manager), I rule ‘a’ world. I commandeer everything to do with my product, which I like.”
“I wanted to be a journalist when I was young. I used to “publish” these newspapers about the goings-on of my life and then share with my family… I loved fact-finding and reporting.
Now, I’m a product marketer, and writing, messaging and storytelling are at the core of what I do.. I do a deep dive into the product’s value proposition and how it matches customer/market needs. In its own way, it feels like investigative journalism!”
“I asked my parents and they said I wanted to be an architect or designer, and that I’d tackle the IKEA catalogue as soon as it came in the door to start planning rooms and renovations. I ended up in an adjacent field - I work in commercial real estate, and while I don’t directly design or build in my job, I think about the value and benefits of great spaces.
To be honest, I probably would have gone into designing or architecture if I had more examples of people with these roles in my life when I was growing up.”
When you think back to the things you loved as a kid, can you tap into ways you can access more of these elements in a small way without completely switching jobs (or lives)?
Can you find ways to carve out a little bit more of what made you tick as a kid in your current role?
Does tapping into these feelings and passions might make you grateful for having elements of these things in your current role?
Resources and Links
“Screw Finding Your Passion” - Mark Manson makes a similar case for uncovering your passions by revisiting your childhood (MM.net)
James Clear on finding “Passion”: It’s hard to define vague concepts like passion, start with inversion by eliminating the things that you don’t want to do (Twitter)
Cool Ladies Doing Cool Things: BOW DOWN TO QUEEN RIRI. Ok, so Queen is not her official title, but earlier this week, Barbados recognized Rihanna as a national hero during their presidential inauguration which also marked the country becoming a national republic and fully independent from British rule (after 400 YEARS!) Yay Rihanna, Boo Colonialism! (CNN)