I discuss career plans with each of my team members at least two times a year. These conversations are usually awkward. Partly because we are engineers, and partly because of the many underlying expectations we feel we are not meeting. Our culture tells us we need to have a defined plan in life.
Long-term goal setting does not fit many of us because we do not know exactly what we want to do and failing to reach artificial goals creates undue stress and the feeling of inadequacy. I have learned, after many career conversations, that it is exceedingly rare to have clear plans for our life and goals.
Here is what I share with my team members during career conversations:
- It is okay for you not to have a clearly defined plan for your career. The vast majority of people do not.
- You need to try many things to figure out what you want to do, you cannot figure this out through simple contemplation
- Through trying many things, you will find aspects of those activities that you like and aspects that you dislike. The goal is to increase the former while decreasing the latter over time. Though, it is not always a linear upward progression
- It is likely that you have subtle goals like “I would like to see what that is like” or “I want to try that” or more specifically ” I want to get my master’s”. These are all good but not required. Consider these in trying something new.
- Sometimes you are in just the right place at the right time, you have to listen to the universe when it is trying to point you in a direction.
- You sometimes have to follow your interest and see where it leads you.
- Over time you will start to find what you gravitate to and you should pay attention to this and try to add more of this into your life.