Career Chess: 7 Moves to Design Work You (Actually) Love
And why "love" is a very high a bar to clear
Quitting Corp's value proposition is to help you design a work life you love.
How?
By helping you develop agency over your work life. Agency to steer your career towards work you can enjoy and, if you are very lucky, actually fall in love with.
It isn't a "going with the flow" attitude. It's thinking like a chess player, being several moves ahead, anticipating different scenarios, and positioning yourself for future success.
When your employer makes decisions that impact you - and they will - it can feel like they've stripped away your agency. That loss stings. But if you're thinking ahead, you'll bounce back and maintain control of the direction of your work life.
Winning Moves
Know your non-negotiables: What are you unwilling to compromise on? If easier, start by making a list of what you dislike, and then figure out all the things in opposition. Don't judge yourself: no one needs to approve of your aspirations.
Follow the signs of your energy patterns: Which types of work or tasks energize you and pull you back in when you walk away from them? That's work you love. Actively seek it out.
Pursue “work-related experiments”: As we grow in our careers, the path narrows. Finding time for experimentation can be a counterforce. It can be as simple as shadowing someone or taking a course in an adjacent field (like a comms pro learning data analytics), attending workshops, joining a professional association and taking on committee roles. Or do what I did: start a blog!
Diversify your work-life: Like the stock market, our careers will go up and down. If we treat them as financial advisers tell us to treat investment portfolios, we would diversify our expertise, skills, and relationships. This type of diversification – which is hard – reduces our risk and anxiety when our agency is threatened or taken away.
Think in terms of "career seasons:" Normalize transitions as if they were seasons that come and go. Like summer, fall, winter, and spring. Transitioning between one job and another will be less stressful; change will lose some of the stigma it can carry (especially changes not driven entirely by you).
Build networks of "strong" and "weak" ties: Anyone who's ever needed a shoulder to cry on knows the value of strong ties. And according to research by Stanford's Mark Granovetter, casual acquaintances and distant connections lead to more opportunities than our close relationships.
Own your success metrics: In corp life, there is no end to metrics imposed on us: performance criteria, sales quotas and yes, promo quotas. What are the things that actually matter to you that you are keeping yourself accountable for. Areas to consider are networking, days taken for reflection and planning, and even the number of times you said "no" to protect your boundaries.
A note about "loving" work
I have loved many of my jobs, and I have not loved some of my jobs. Mostly, I've been able to steer my work life into places where I have been very happy: I can't think of how many times a great network and my experience in different areas like journalism, communications, and government relations helped me do the steering.
But here is a thought:
Where I am from, Brazil, we take passion seriously and save it for the people in our lives. Jobs are transactional relationships - salary in exchange for labor. We can be satisfied at jobs we are good at, have autonomy, work with respectful people, and are fairly compensated.
Perhaps being in love with work is a bar too high?