Don't focus on your career
And other mistakes you (sh)could commit in the first 5 years of your professional life
I vividly remember a conversation I had early on my working days, with a friend. She was slightly older and already had an established path in HR, working mostly for big companies — engineering, telcos, etc. I was then a young and reckless guy, in my final year as a hired entrepreneur for a fund, working on a company they were about to sell.
Me: Well, I'm fed up with them. This process should be faster, and I'm about to make it so. Either we finish the sale this week, or I'm bouncing.
Her: That's not smart, not smart at all. See, these things take time. And if you stick with it and help them solve the final bullshit, they'll remember you well. This will do wonders for your career, think about it.
Me: Screw it, I don't have a career. I'll never have one.
Her: Well, that's just dumb — you do have one, you just don't understand it yet.
She was most absolutely right. I was just being foolish, immature, and should've just had the patience to go through the whole process and take my next step from there.
But I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I didn't take in that piece of wisdom, so I could make whatever mistakes I would in this case and form my own view of what was a career, and what was the angle on it I wanted to pursue.
The main takeaway of this time in my life was learning I had the strength to choose whatever I thought was right, and handle whatever consequences came about. It was also a very good exercise in critical thinking — and revisiting my logic later on, when I realized I made a wrong decision. These are not skills you learn formally, and they're usually a treat of character or something you grab from your family. Nevertheless, everyone should and can develop these traits, but it takes a very specific type of exercise. It requires you to risk being wrong in important aspects of your life.
If you're in your first 5 years of your professional life, that's a sweet spot for me for you to risk being absolutely wrong in whatever aspects you may choose or test. You'll be most likely forgiven — "hey, she's young/junior, let it go…" — or whatever you do won't have such long term consequences. And even if it has, you'll have a lot of time to build yourself up around it.
Consistently taking big, seemingly dumb risks at this point in time will help you learn fast, create a keen sense of critical thinking, help you understand where your real vocation lies and maybe even give you back a few great opportunities when you turn out right in your bets.
So, as an homage to the recklessness of this period, here's a list of 5 mistakes for the first 5 years of your professional life you (sh)could make in order to grab a deeper understanding of yourself, your career and the world around you:
- Don't focus on your career. Hey, don't even assume what you have is a career just yet, because it just isn't. Experiment. Change around. Work double-shifts in different initiatives. Flirt with becoming a musician while working as a field engineer. Offer muay thai classes on the after hours of your tech job. Try graffiti. Just don't over focus on what is usually called a career — you don't even know what's yours yet.
- Start a business, even if you know you don't have what it takes to run one yourself. Few experiences are more intense in learning, character building and interesting than building a business, whatever time you are in your life. But in those first 5 years, you're likely without many of the responsibilities life will throw your way (a marriage, a child, buying real estate, etc), and whatever you lose with this bet, you'll recover fast. And hey, if you don't lose, it means you built a thriving business early in your life. Cool, right?
- Drop-off your masters/doctorate/etc. Are you deep into your advanced education, feeling frustrated, and want to do something else entirely with your life? Drop it. Leave it now and go pursue what makes you happier. "Wow, slow down, but a masters will help me professionally" — it certainly could, but if you're hating it right now, what makes you think you'll like working with what it brings your way? Just drop off, and go live your life. If you want to go back, it'll be there waiting for you.
- Does your family have a business? Ignore it. Your parents will thank me later for this, but for now stay away from the family business. Do whatever other things you want or that make sense to you. Work for an NGO, for a big company, start your own, work for a super-early-stage startup with an all equity comp, whatever works. But stay away from the family business for now. When get at it, you'll be a much better professional than you would had you gone at it head on.
- Don't focus on networking. Focus on becoming an interesting, value creating person. This will build a network to you naturally, and make you a valuable person for when you do focus on networking, it becomes something almost effortless to make. Too early in your career a network is whatever — it's likely not the one you need. But if you're focusing on being an interesting person, it'll be easier to make people gravitate your way in the future.
I've either committed or am close friends with people that engaged in one or more of these mistakes — and we turned out just fine.
But hey, don't let me tell you where to go wrong. Find your own common-sense opportunities and wreck them — the world is abound with obvious knowledge to be ruled out. Go rogue.