Should I Stay Or Leave My Job? | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right. What's our next question here?

00:00:03.640 | So we have a follow-up question from Olivia as well, and she took advantage of the new

00:00:09.280 | question survey because we get to answer two questions from her back to back.

00:00:13.720 | Yes. If you're early in filling in that survey, you're much more likely to get your question

00:00:18.360 | answered than a few months from now. So yeah, good advertisement for filling out the question

00:00:23.700 | survey.

00:00:25.600 | So in her book, and she says, "In your book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, you give the

00:00:30.240 | following as a reason for leaving a job. It presents few opportunities to distinguish

00:00:35.200 | yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable."

00:00:39.400 | She worries that in her job as a product designer, she's repeating the same work instead of getting

00:00:43.840 | better.

00:00:44.840 | She studied literature in college, and as we talked about, she did a part-time master's

00:00:49.720 | and well, she's doing a part-time master's in economics right now.

00:00:54.160 | These feel much more challenging, like something that you can truly develop expertise in.

00:00:59.440 | At the same time, she gets paid a lot as a product designer in tech, so maybe the skill

00:01:04.040 | is valuable.

00:01:05.400 | How can she decide if the first disqualifier applies to her career?

00:01:12.500 | So just to put this in context, Olivia is referring to, in my book, So Good They Can't

00:01:17.360 | Ignore You, I lean heavily on this idea that stop worrying about if you have the exact

00:01:22.760 | right job for you, or that you have a passion that has to be matched to your career, and

00:01:27.160 | if you don't exactly match it, then you're going to be miserable.

00:01:29.560 | I argue that many different professional pursuits can be the foundation for a working life that's

00:01:36.520 | a great source of satisfaction.

00:01:37.840 | But I did give three disqualifiers.

00:01:40.080 | Here's three things that tell you that this might not be a job you should stay in.

00:01:43.560 | So the first was what Olivia mentioned.

00:01:46.600 | You don't really have options to build up skills that can then be used as leverage to

00:01:50.200 | shape your career going forward.

00:01:51.600 | That was disqualifier number one.

00:01:54.200 | I believe disqualifier number two was it conflicted with values.

00:01:59.800 | So you're working for Philip Morris, and the idea of so many people getting sick from smoking

00:02:05.440 | is against your values.

00:02:08.040 | And then three, I think, was you don't like the people.

00:02:09.880 | These people are just, I can't stand them.

00:02:13.800 | I don't mind being an investment banker from a values perspective.

00:02:18.160 | I am going to have lots of options because I'll make a lot of money, lots of options

00:02:21.720 | if I get really good.

00:02:22.840 | But you know what?

00:02:23.840 | I can't take these people I work with at Goldman.

00:02:26.960 | So that'd be number three.

00:02:28.480 | All right.

00:02:29.480 | So she's asking, do I think that first disqualifier applies to her job as a product designer in

00:02:37.240 | tech?

00:02:38.240 | She's worried.

00:02:40.000 | Is this something I can keep getting better and getting options, or is it something that

00:02:42.600 | I'm just going to eventually have to move on from?

00:02:45.800 | What I would suggest in this situation is, and this is a evolution from the way I talked

00:02:50.560 | about this back in So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:02:53.440 | So it's been 10 years since that book came out.

00:02:55.280 | So this is a bit of an evolution.

00:02:57.800 | I would lean a little bit heavier on a lifestyle centric career planning approach to this question,

00:03:04.560 | as opposed to remaining more narrowly focused on just the aspects of the career.

00:03:10.520 | So in lifestyle centric career planning, you have your vision for what you want your daily

00:03:16.560 | experience what you want your life to be like in all different aspects, not just professionally.

00:03:21.760 | And then you can work backwards and figure out how your work can help get you to that

00:03:26.960 | lifestyle.

00:03:27.960 | So if you have this lifestyle fix, the question then becomes, does this technology product

00:03:33.020 | design career that I'm in, do I see a way to use this to grow in this?

00:03:39.280 | Do I see a trajectory here that is going to support this lifestyle I have, this vision

00:03:44.720 | I have of my lifestyle?

00:03:45.720 | All right.

00:03:46.720 | And in answering that question, you probably want to look for role models, case studies

00:03:49.920 | and examples, people at your company or other companies, freelancers, people on their own,

00:03:53.800 | but people within the same orbit of general skills that have done interesting things with

00:03:57.400 | it.

00:03:58.400 | This will elaborate your understanding of what is possible with this job.

00:04:02.200 | As you get good, what are the different options of what you can do with this?

00:04:05.760 | You mentioned in your elaboration, I'm looking at it now, you say some pretty stark things

00:04:11.280 | like only people in their twenties can be a product designer while their mind is fresh.

00:04:15.300 | There are no product designers in their thirties.

00:04:17.120 | Your only chance, your only option is to become a manager.

00:04:20.220 | But then even then you can only do that during your forties.

00:04:22.600 | That's probably not true.

00:04:24.560 | I mean, I think you probably need to be more systematic at learning what the different

00:04:29.360 | possibilities are for this general constellation of skills and not just, okay, within the company

00:04:36.240 | you work for and you know, what's the promotion chain here, but for product designers in generally

00:04:39.920 | people who work in different industries on product design, people who'd go out on their

00:04:43.600 | own people who do freelance.

00:04:45.200 | Is there people who do this for this type of company and they do it six months out of

00:04:50.440 | 12 and make a pretty good living at it and using that they can live somewhere that's

00:04:56.080 | kind of cheap but exotic and interesting on a farm somewhere.

00:04:58.520 | I don't know.

00:04:59.520 | You got to get out there.

00:05:00.520 | You got to get the information and then figure out seeing all these different options.

00:05:03.760 | Do I see a way of deploying any of these to get to my image of ideal lifestyle?

00:05:07.080 | And if yes, go for it.

00:05:08.840 | If no, then yeah, you can say this disqualifier applies.

00:05:12.880 | So that's my evolution.

00:05:13.880 | Let's use lifestyle more and be a little bit less narrowly focused on just what is this

00:05:18.720 | job?

00:05:19.720 | What am I going to get from this job?

00:05:20.720 | We're going to go for this job because ultimately what does that matter if it's not serving

00:05:24.600 | the life that you're actually aiming to achieve?

00:05:29.120 | That comes back to when you talk about being a reporter for your own job, essentially,

00:05:34.880 | you talk about that a lot.

00:05:35.880 | Yeah.

00:05:36.880 | Act as if you're a reporter and figure out what the steps are to do X, Y, Z.

00:05:41.480 | Yeah.

00:05:42.480 | Like you're writing a book or an article about how people get here in my career.

00:05:45.880 | Go talk to people, look up people's resumes online, read profiles of people in your industry.

00:05:51.160 | Yeah, you got to be like, I'm going to write a book about product design and the career

00:05:56.200 | possibilities of product design.

00:05:57.440 | So it's a research mindset.

00:05:59.120 | Yeah.

00:06:00.120 | Yeah.

00:06:01.120 | Yeah.

00:06:02.120 | Yeah.

00:06:07.120 | (upbeat music)

00:06:09.700 | (upbeat music)

Should I Stay Or Leave My Job? | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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