Drastic Career Change

Reasonable People

Two news items struck me in recent weeks. At the risk of delving into politics ...

1. The California Supreme Court ruled that the state's same-sex marriage ban violates the state constitution.
2. Mildred Loving died at age 68. Along with her husband and the help of the ACLU, Ms. Loving won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that Virginia's law banning interracial marriage violated the U.S. Constitution.

What does this have to do with drastic career change?

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”

I would argue that trying to adapt the world to oneself is itself a reasonable course of action. The Economist obituary reports that Ms. Loving just wanted to walk down the street of her own home town with her husband's arm around her. Reasonable. Ditto couples who want to get on with their lives and their households on what they believe to be the same terms as everybody else.

Similarly, it is utterly reasonable to expect a work schedule that allows time for sleep and exercise, credentialing systems that lend themselves to competence not power plays, and career paths that recognize the reality that people's growth can be evolutionary (even revolutionary) rather than linear.

Differential Diagnosis for Boredom

Have you ever quit a job because of the kind of boredom that disrupted your sleep and raised your blood pressure? Are you sure it was boredom?

A lot of what we label as boredom is actually frustration -- frustration at spinning wheels, inability to get things done, etc. Those of us who have a track record of drastic career changes have probably experienced a special kind of boredom-frustration that doesn't get discussed much in the career counseling literature: the energy drain that comes from efforts to squelch one's perceptions.

Here's what I mean: You apply your powers of observation to a problem that everyone on your work team is working hard to solve. You discover that you perceive a few things that others don't -- and your perceptions are not welcome. So, you must spend a lot of energy vigilantly monitoring yourself, figuring out which obvious things you must pretend not to see at all, an impossible task because those things don't announce themselves.

When No One Career Will Do - Synthesize

Those of you who have ever owned a Volkswagen bus have probably seen John Muir's masterpiece, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. Its subtitle, a tagline that's launched hundreds of other books, is A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot.

Muir's resume was in the front matter of the edition I once owned. Before writing the manual (published in 1969), the author spent years of hopping between work as a technical writer, a mechanic, a computer engineer, and a salesman. I inferred from that document a cycle I've experienced time and again: When work as a tech writer doesn't satisfy the need to work with the hands, get a mechanic job. When the mechanic job starts to feel too mindless, brush off the credentials and get a desk job. When computer engineering starts to feel isolating, move to the sales department where you'll get more people contact. When sales doesn't provide enough intellectual stimulation, take some tech writing jobs on the side. And repeat.

Muir found his way out of the cycle in a unique role that was all his own: writing technical manuals about cars for "regular" people.

May I be so fortunate!

R.I.P. Albert Hofmann

I found a nice blog tribute to Albert Hofmann, the discoverer (inventor) of Lysergic-Acid-Diethylamide-25. Hofmann passed away Tuesday at age 102. A laboratory chemist with Sandoz, the scientist underwent one of the most drastic career changes in history when he took his famous bicycle ride and, over the next few decades, surrended to the job the universe gave him: "Father of LSD."

Colby Cosh on Albert Hofmann

Three Models for a Creative Offering Commercial Services

Creatives have a unique problem when trying to imagine a vision for making a living from their specialty: When you like what you do, you tend to get stuck in the idea of doing it all day long. In the long run, that is usually neither fun nor profitable. So -- what kind of business can one build around a creative activity such as writing or illustration?

Some thoughts --

Model #1 - "the cooperative" - You are one of a few established independent writers who share expenses for infrastructure and support. You gain some efficiency and fellowship and, perhaps, a more professional image for each person's business. You must do a cost-benefit analysis of this arrangement against the alternative arrangement of simply operating out of a home office. Each writer may get more leads. This model isn't scaleable, ultimately because everyone is still trading time for money.

Model #2 - "the entrepreneur" - You (and partners, if you wish) create "the space" yourself. In addition to your work as a freelance writer, you become an entrepreneur whose business is "incubator for writing businesses." People pay you rent and/or pay for value-added service.

Model #3 - "the agency" - You (and partners, if you wish) create the space, hire not only support staff but also less experienced writers, copyeditors, proofreaders, etc. and generate business for the entity rather than for the individual writer founders.

Faux Pas or Hallmark of a Talent

On several occasions, I've found myself in the position of working myself out of a job. This may seem like a poor strategy. What I think it demonstrates is the pleasure I take in solving problems. I am attracted to roles filled with challenges -- often the challenges are lack of systems (or use of the wrong systems), lack of technology, or a theory of operation that's slightly askew.

Solve the problems and the job goes poof!

Holistic Learning E-Book

I stumbled onto a fabulous paper written by a recent high school graduate. The topic is what he calls holistic learning. Read it here.

A point that stuck out for me: he notes that holistic learning works least well in domains governed by arbitrary rules and best where an underlying system or construct exists. It occurs to me that those of us with a track record of multiple, successful drastic career changers are natural holistic learners: Our ability to see patterns and extrapolate from them leads to rapid learning (and the relatively rapid onset of boredom.)

Getting Slightly Famous

When it comes to online marketing, I practice what I preach. I'm at an advantage in that I love to do things that have no guaranteed outcome, and where the rewards come in the form of sudden surprises. Yesterday I received a mailing from one of my favorite online coaches, Milana Lehinsky. Lo and behold I found myself quoted in the report she sent to my list. I posted a comment on her blog about one of my pet peeves, credentialism and inappropriate professionalization.

Read the whole report at New Coaching Manifesto Revisited, and look for my name on page 5.

Self-Esteem -- Uncle!

For years I resisted the idea that my underearning was in any way related to low self-esteem. (Specifically, I am not referring to choosing to be a cafe worker; I'm talking about failing to negotiate and accepting being underpaid.) I had some pretty good, monkish arguments about why low earnings was a price worth paying to do work that was meaningful. Those arguments are insidious because they hold a grain of truth: Work that feels empty over the very long haul isn't worth doing for any amount of money.

It hit me one day while talking to a coworker who said she was willing to accept low pay to help "move the [nonprofit] organization forward." I realized that my ability to move the organization forward to the best of my ability depends on the same kind of monetary support it takes to move forward IBM. I may not need the exact same amount of money. I do need enough not to have to subsidize the job with side work; not to have to spend time, energy, and stress figuring out which bills to pay this month; to engage in continuing education and other learning experiences; and so on.

The failure to see this pretty transparent reality is rooted in a judgement: either my potential contribution is limited my time as a "pair of hands" carrying out tasks or my potential contribution flows from the whole of me, including my mind, my knowledge, and the abilities I can develop.

Bottom line -- money fuels that self-development engine.

Beyond Drastic?

I found a wonderful quotation today from Mabel Stark, famous tiger trainer, who evidently needed even more excitement in her career than I do:

"Mine may seem a strange profession for a woman, but it is not physical strength that counts in the big cage. . .For me there is no greater thrill than stepping into a cageful of those glorious beasts and matching wits with them. . .There is a matchless beauty about their tawny bodies striped in midnight black. There is rhythmic grace in their stealthy stride and the long curving arc of their supple bodies as they spring. I even love their snarling hiss as they bare their powerful fangs to strike. . .Nowadays, when I meet men and women who spend their lives shut up in houses or offices, whose faces are gray with the monotony of humdrum daily existence, I realize how fortunate I was in the choice of my lifework."