Can you ever motivate yourself well enough to do the work?
If not, there are two options:
One might be the path you really want to take, but the other might be the more feasible option if you don’t have a lot of flexibility to radically change things.
As I look into graduate degree programs, a couple of voices are bouncing around in my head.
One belongs to Cal Newport, who regularly advises knowledge workers not to get graduate degrees with two exceptions:
Then there’s the advice from my late mentor Dan Miller:
If you are going to get a degree so you can get a better job – you’re likely to be disappointed. If you are going for the personal development, the social connections, and the broadening of your options, you’ll always see yourself as more prepared and having more options.
What both of these thinkers agree on is that there must be clarity about your end goal.
If you’re going to school (or back to school, in my case) because you’re bored, miserable, burnt out, or feeling lost, it’s quite likely you’ll still be all those things after you get the degree. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll have a mountain of debt added to your list of problems.
Begin with the end in mind. Know what you’re trying to achieve and what’s required to get there. Have an idea for your life planned out before you make a major decision like this.
And if you aren’t sure what you need for the career you want or the lifestyle you have in mind, start asking people who are already doing it.
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I used to create and edit resumés as a side hustle.
I learned soon after I started that it wasn’t the best business to run. Not because I was bad at it (my resumés were gorgeous and well-made), but because no one who could hire my clients ever got the resumés I made.
By the time I started that little business, resumé screening software had taken over the business world. And most job postings were getting anywhere from 200 to 1,000 applicants a piece. No one was seeing my clients’ resumés.
Someone would get those jobs, but it was unlikely to be the person I was helping.
If you read books like What Color Is Your Parachute? or 48 Days to the Work (and Life) You Love, you’ll learn that sending out resumés to companies only works about 4% of the time.
That means you’d have to apply for 25 jobs to get one response (just a response, not a hiring decision). And those are just basic statistics—you wouldn’t actually get a response 1 in 25 times. You might have to send out 100 applications and only get responses on the last 4.
So what to do?
I’ve been asked recently by numerous people if I could help them fix their resumés. And I’ve declined every time.
“I don’t do that anymore,” I say, “because it no longer works.”
What does work is simple: connection.
The old saying is, unfortunately, true: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And in the connection economy of the 21st Century, that really is the only thing that matters.
By connections, I don’t mean the hundreds of people you barely know on LinkedIn. People who are creating content to (maybe) entice the platform’s algorithm in the hopes that someone will see them and say, “Let’s hire Jane.”
I mean real people that you know: friends, family, coworkers. The barista who knows your name. The husband of the banker who handles your mortgage.
If you want a to get a job in the modern economy (and 88% of those available are never posted online), you have to talk to a lot of people.
Every job I’ve ever had, I got because I knew someone. Every. Single. One.
Half the time I wasn’t even looking. The other half, I asked for help. I told lots of people with whom I’d built relationships that I was looking.
Now, I also know that’s probably some of my privilege showing. But it’s the advice that I’ve given everyone who’s asked me over the last couple of years. And for those who have listened—and taken ACTION—it’s worked out.
Now, I’m no networking expert. Nor do I “network” in the slimy business sense.
I’ve just read a lot and built relationships with people.
In addition to the couple of books I recommended above, I’d also tell you to check out:
Both of these books have strategies on how to TALK to people in ways that will (eventually and without being sleazy) lead to jobs.
Resumés don’t work. Connections do.
But resumés are easier—a way to hide from the difficult, but effective, work of having meaningful conversations with real people.
Do the thing that works, not the thing that’s easy.
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A great question I learned from Seth Godin is asking: what’s it for?
The book you’re buying—what’s it for?
That certification you’re trying to earn—what’s it for?
Is it the credibility that goes with having read this or obtained that? If so, that’s just a signaling strategy—though possibly a necessary one.
What about going to medical school and getting an MD—what’s that for?
Is it to get the credibility and authority that goes with the letters after your name? Is it to keep the generational legacy going…even though you’d rather be teaching?
Or is it to actually learn how to help people lead healthier lives?
Back to buying a book—what’s it for? What am I hoping to get out of it? An answer to what I’m supposed to do with my life? Knowledge that I can use to help myself or other people?
Or that certification I’m thinking about. Am I doing it because it actually helps me get where I want to go? Or am I doing it because it’ll look good on a resume?
Begin with the end in mind. That’s where this question leads you.
Begin with the end in mind.
If you don’t know what you want or where you’re going, how will you know what that “thing” is for?
We kill most of our great, wonderful, creative ideas before they’re ever born.
We write them off, dismiss them out of hand, smother them…
But we can’t know if our ideas are good—if they’ll work or cause the change we seek to make in the world—until we publish them.
Only by letting our ideas engage with the market, the world, or our audience can we know if it’s good.
If you judge every idea before you try it out, you’ll never be creative.
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Dr. Covey taught me perhaps the most important and fundamental life lesson of all. It’s the idea of paradigms and the See-Do-Get formula.
Paradigms are our ways of seeing the world. As Dr. Covey describes it, they are maps of the territory we are navigating. As we know, maps are a representation of the world but not the world itself. These “maps” affect every aspect of our daily lives.
Our paradigms put us into a cycle known as “See-Do-Get”. How we see something (our paradigm) affects our behavior (what we do). Our behavior affects the results we get. These results then reinforce our viewpoint. They become a never-ending cycle that can only be short-circuited by changing how we “see”. We must examine the map.
I once knew a teacher whose students approached him about putting on a short play for the school. They saw this as a way to put the English literature they were studying into a fun and creative context. But this teacher saw his students as an uncreative bunch of hooligans with no talent. He did not believe them capable of staging anything worthwhile.
Grudgingly, he let the students “try” to put something together. Because of his mindset, he failed to encourage them, coach them, or help them in any way. His only offering was scathing criticism because he saw no possible positive outcome. The students became increasingly frustrated and unhappy with their efforts. They began to believe their teacher correct in his views and quit the project after a few weeks. Their “failure” further reinforced the teacher’s own paradigm.
I felt devastated when I found out about the situation from the students. Why did it happen that way? Because he saw them as uncreative, incapable, and without talent, he treated them as such. He failed to help or encourage his students and did nothing but criticize and condemn. This behavior led to the results he expected all along.
How we see a problem (or person, political party, or random happenstance) is a problem itself. It affects our behavior and the results we get, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Design thinking teaches us to reframe problems in ways that allow us to take positive action on them. Only by changing how we see something can we get to the root of the issue. If you want to make positive change in any area of your life, first examine how you see the problem.
What would have happened had this teacher been aware of the way he saw his students? What if he had taken a step back and seen them as young, curious, and full of potential? Maybe he would have treated them as budding thespians and offered encouragement. This change in behavior might have led to a fun, engaging, and successful student project. And who knows? It might have had lasting effects on all the students, even the ones who came to watch.
Instead, his negative mindset destroyed all hope of having any success at all.
I’ll leave the final word on this subject to Dr. Covey himself:
“If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.”
—Dr. Stephen R. Covey
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