I had the privilege of speaking in a class at the University of Washington last night, and I’m always blown away by how much I learn from interacting with college students.
The class had a mixture of some early to mid-stage career level folks, along with some pre-career Junior and Seniors, which made it fun for me to draw parallels for all audiences in my topic. I spoke about three key areas I think are valuable for preparing yourself for your career and ultimately surviving it.
The areas were: networking (no surprise), building a brand, and telling your career story, but as they started to ask questions, I realized just how deep and complex the topic is of “preparing for your career and ultimately surviving it.”
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One student raised their hand. “Scott, how do I juggle my many ambitions and ultimately pick a lane?”
Another student asked, “How do I balance career growth and outside responsibilities?”
One asked, “How do you overcome making uncomfortable career decisions like knowing when to leave, when to say, etc.?”
All freaking great questions, and there is no perfect answer to any of them.
I tried to tie them back to goals and your personal why, and I spoke about the seasons of your career and how things change. I even mentioned the Four Burner theory and how you will have some period of time when you juggle more than others. As I answered questions, I realized more than ever that your career is just a big choose-your-own-adventure novel, and each chapter is being written as you speak.
The reality is that nobody really knows exactly what the right path is while they are living it. We love to pretend there is some magical GPS system for careers where every decision cleanly maps to the next opportunity, but most people are improvising their way through uncertainty while trying to make the best decision they can with the information they currently have. One chapter might be about chasing money. Another chapter might be about survival. Another chapter might be about rebuilding confidence after a toxic environment slowly drained the life out of you without you even realizing it was happening. The hard part is that you usually do not understand the meaning of the chapter until you are already halfway into the next one.
When I was younger, I thought careers were supposed to look linear and polished, almost like everyone else had received some invisible instruction manual that I somehow missed out on. The older I get, the more I realize that most successful people simply keep turning pages instead of closing the book every time things get uncomfortable.
Some chapters are exciting. Some are exhausting. Some are confusing as hell. Some feel repetitive, like you are stuck rereading the same page over and over again, wondering why nothing is changing. Then all of a sudden, one random conversation, one opportunity, one introduction, or one uncomfortable decision completely changes the direction of the story.
That is why networking matters so much. That is why building a brand matters. That is why learning how to tell your story matters. Every person you meet, every risk you take, every room you walk into, every weird side project you try, every uncomfortable moment where you speak up when your voice shakes a little, those are all choices inside of the story.
Most people underestimate how much momentum is created from small decisions repeated over long periods of time. They think careers are built from giant breakthrough moments when, in reality, they are often built from hundreds of smaller pages stacked together over years that slowly create an entirely different ending than the one you originally imagined for yourself.
The beautiful thing about a choose-your-own-adventure novel is that you always get another decision to make.
You are not trapped by the chapter you are currently in unless you decide to stop turning pages. Careers evolve. Priorities evolve. People evolve. The version of you that exists at twenty-two should not want the exact same things at thirty-five or forty-five. That is growth. That is life.
Your job is not to perfectly predict every chapter ahead of time. Your job is to stay curious enough, courageous enough, and self-aware enough to keep writing the story instead of letting fear write it for you.