Imagine Your Career as a Journey
Edition #068
Introduction
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Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
This is the loneliest road in America.
It’s an extremely vivid and beautifully told story by Hanna Lott Schwartz, with videos and photos captured by Mathis Svold. It is an article in National Geographic.
What’s impressive about this article is that when you read it, it brings images to your mind about how this road, Route 50, would have been in the 1850s during the time of the Goldrush.
Here are some brief but fantastic stories about the history of this road, places, people and the mindsets that were experienced along the way on Route 50:
According to the Highway 50 Association, the Roaring Road (as it was called) became so congested that hopeful miners and their families would have to wait days before they could access it—a Panama Canal of sorts, standing between the new frontier and the old.
The California Department of Transportation had called Route 50 the “backbone of America.”
‘You have to understand, you’re 112 miles from the nearest Walmart and 110 miles from the nearest stoplight. You learn a lot of independence.’
It’s big, vast, and seemingly endless, and there’s solitude, yes, but not sadness.
Read the article here.
After The Glory Fades
This TED Podcast, Good Sport, tries to capture a significant moment that happens in most of our lives which we never stop to think about - what after our professional life is over? How do sports stars handle these situations, mainly because they quit playing professional sports either due to injury or their body or mind is not agile anymore, or they retire early, but they have a long life ahead of them?
In this conversation, Jody Aviragan talks to ageing expert Tracey Gendron, Olympian turned chef Dawn Burrell, and soccer legend Carli Lloyd about finding grace and direction when closing a chapter.
Here are some points to ponder about:
What does it take mentally for these sports legends to continue to do workouts every day when there is no goal or objective in front of them after they quit their career?
The importance of embracing and enjoying the process rather than only preparing for outcomes or goals( like a tournament or a tour etc.) becomes important as these sports legends age. They learn to embrace and enjoy the process, rather than just sports goals & wins when they were younger, start to take precedence.
The traits these sports legends had developed during the peak of their career- to push themselves, be competitive and get into uncomfortable situations- were something they could leverage to get into new alternative careers after giving up their professional careers.
Ageing Expert Tracey Gendron says that as we age, we become more unique and start to look less like others!
The need to start thinking of ageing not as a retirement but as an evolution.
Listen to the entire episode here:
AI Oversight - Determining The Need to Regulate AI Responsibly
There has been phenomenal interest, excitement and buzz around ChatGPT and its incredible potential. One section of people believes it will be transformational in how we think and work. But, unfortunately, the other section believes this technology has some severe downsides. Therefore, AI needs proper regulation and protection before it takes control of our lives today and the lives of the next generation.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing examining the rules for artificial intelligence, and this was telecast live. It is a fascinating, informative and mature discussion of what needs to be done with AI.
Here are some questions for you to think which are being discussed in this video:
Does AI need to be regulated at all?
What are the potential pitfalls or downsides of regulating it?
Are there any upsides if AI is regulated?
How do you regulate AI without stifling innovation?
The above questions and many more challenges are being examined and discussed in detail. This is a long video. So, sit back and listen to some critical points being made here.
Imagine Your Career as a Journey
Reading through the article about ‘Route 50’ on National Geographic and listening to the Good Sport Podcast, there were many thoughts that bubbled up in the head that we often don’t spend enough time thinking about.
If you take your career as more than a 30-year journey, there’s a lot to look back on; take cues from the lonely ‘Route 50’ road story and from the compressed careers of sports legends and see what you can learn from them and plan your journey.
In the early years of your career, there is an inner need for recognition and achievement-driven markers or goals that you dream of, and you carry them in your mind. Hence, there is a sense of direction, speed and busyness in going behind these, and firms compete for your drive, talent and skills to help them achieve their business goals. This is almost like the 1850s syndrome in the ‘Route 50’ road where there is a lot of buzz happening on the ground due to either a ‘talent promise’ that you may have or a ‘talent deficit’ that is there in the market. As a result, a long line of trucks(namely companies) are waiting on the road for you. You feel surreal, and it’s almost a situation of living your dreams in those years.
In your mid-career years, the initial hype is settling down, and you start to observe and feel the opportunities, successes and failures that have gone by, and there is a resetting of your expectations - higher or lower as the case may be. This is when you start evaluating and assessing your strengths and weakness from your successes and failures, what you are willing to compromise or not compromise with, what’s your playground and pitch you want to play etc. This is like the mid-period of the 1850s ‘Route 50’ road, where the traffic is not as dense or busy as it was in the early 1850s. New markets, industries, growth hubs etc., come up, which attract traffic, and there are new routes that emerge where there are new goldmines and associated risks too. This is a critical decision point for you to take - either follow ‘the new Route 50’, which may require you to adapt, learn new skills, change industries, functions etc., or you can continue to do more of what you did( travel in the existing ‘Route 50’ Road), but you may or may not get commensurate returns for your efforts or talent. But you must get comfortable with any decision you have taken and avoid looking at the wrong benchmarks and success markers. This is also very similar to the life of sports legends as their wins begin to taper or their body starts to give up, but they have a whole life ahead of them. They need to recalibrate and be positive to make the most of it for the rest of their life.
In the penultimate period of your career, your mid-career decisions start to have an impact. The ecosystem around you will undergo a further transformation and change - new industries emerge, and old industries are no longer relevant. Still, you need to carefully evaluate your skills-opportunity fit and lead that change from the front. This is your loneliest but long drive on the road. The number of available opportunities tends to diminish, but new routes emerge if you are flexible, adaptable, and willing to learn and improve. The most successful ones extend their ‘professional shelf life’ by transforming and changing how they approach their career. It’s like the career of the chef that Olympian Dawn Burrell decided to take. They are intensely mindful of their strengths and weakness and willing to restart and refine their skills to get better for what’s expected of them in this new timeline. But if you have a fixed and inflexible mindset, and keep thinking and brooding about missed opportunities or poor decisions or losses, then there is no respite, as it will be the loneliest road you will take to travel like the ‘Route 50’ now. There may be nobody on that road, and there may be no traffic or people willing to travel on that road. However, if this is the lonely route that gives you joy and happiness in how you want to progress your career, then it is not the inflexible mindset that is taking you on this route, but it is an informed choice from your side. It’s like the career Dee Helming decided to take along the ‘Route 50’ National Highway owning a laundromat, a bed and breakfast, and a cafe with her husband, Kip. Here, you are willing to live away from the spotlight with the need for independence of thought and action that you place a lot of value on. Hence, the journey on this road is not lonely and sad.
It would be best if you started recognising career journey and success is more of a ‘Struggle of the Unaccepting Mind’ by constantly being unable or come to terms with the route and effort you willingly chose or decided and, therefore, the outcome you are experiencing rather than due to the influence of any external or extraneous factors or people.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
All lonely roads have a story of decision, effort and, therefore, the outcome behind them.
The need to start thinking of ageing not as a retirement but as an evolution.
Regulating disruptive technologies like AI is far more complex than one can imagine. However, learning from the history of disruptive innovations can teach us a thing or two about how and where we can make a start.