Introspecting About My Flawed (Career) Mindset

In this letter, I will discuss the flaws of my approach to my career and why it is equivalent to sending a personal invite to my anxiety. I have seen a few others going through a similar experience, and I hope this introspecting letter encourages them to view their functioning through a non-judgmental lens.

My close friends/colleagues are aware of my anxiety. In the past, I had set unrealistically high standards for myself without any logical backing and based my self-worth on them. Unfortunately, this resulted in two types of side effects: on the good days, I was able to achieve these standards, and on other days, I was not. The former got me thrilled, which had prompted me to set a higher standard only for me to fail, and the latter manifested into devastated self-esteem.

Don't get me wrong - these standards are the reasons for my willpower, perseverance and my success so far. I'm commenting not on the high standards themselves but their unrealistic nature. Let me give you a very real example. During the summer of 2018, I prepared for my internship drive in Fall 2018. This gave me two months to create a plan and execute it. When I did not get an offer from the first few companies, I was broken and started to regret my past decisions. Fortunately, I bagged the internship from Amazon, and it fixed my self-esteem to the point where I was at least able to respect myself and consider myself worthy. This dangling sense of self-worth results in an oscillation of feelings.

However, the mindset I want to talk about is another collateral effect - my fixation on a particular path. When I say that I'm fixated on a particular path, I'm talking about long-term goals as opposed to immediate goals that I discussed above. An example of this would be my goal 5 years down the lane for which I need to have a working plan ready - what am I going to do, what new skills am I going to learn, what place will I need to be, etc. The idea of having a personal 3 to 5-year plan is to help you get a sense of direction of who you want to be and to get the motivation to do the things necessary to be there. This is a perfectly healthy way of going about life.

I divert from this approach when I deprive myself of the opportunity to explore along the way and take calculated risks. Let us assume that I want to get to position X by the next 5 years based on my current interests, the work I enjoy, and other factors. Amidst this journey, I have often found myself scared that I might enjoy some other type of work. Rachel from FRIENDS has eloquently put this feeling into words - what if I don't want to be a shoe? The difference is that here "I" had decided I want to be a shoe.

Apart from the anxiety, this mindset has reduced my adaptability. There are different approaches to work - some believe that work is just meant to be a source of income so that they can have fun in non-work hours. I believe I work the best when I actually enjoy the work I'm doing and when I care about it. My pressure to work towards the now outdated goal, well, does not feel nice, knowing that I am going to produce more value doing something else.

This introspection is influenced by a conversation I had about careers with a product manager at Amazon. We were discussing his career decisions and the reasons behind them, and I discovered that his approach to his career was very fluid. Specifically, he had a general idea of the kind of work he wanted to do and found roles around it. And I consider him to be a successful and satisfied person.

So what am I doing about it? Now instead of fixating on a precise position, I aim to be on the lookout for two things - function and industry. Function means the kind of work you want to be doing, and industry is the type of enterprise you're working for. For example, currently, I am in an operations function, specifically software engineering, in the physical retail industry. I'm going to take these initial years of my career to figure out in what function do I perform my best - that can be software development, marketing, finance, etc, and at the same time, watch out whether I have a particular preference in the industry based on my interest and market trends.

I'm still in my young days, and I am fairly certain I haven't lost the window of opportunity. And to be honest, from what examples I've seen around me, I'm also confident that there might not be a single "window" of opportunity.