Welcome to Career Crashers, where we tell the stories of those who are not content to weigh around following rules and helping for good things to happen. Great careers aren't found, they're forged. It's time to crash the party. You can't rush a great career.
But you can rush away from boredom by Isaac Morehouse. That's me. Relax. No, seriously, relax.
You're not behind the curve, you're not missing out, you don't need to discover your calling or your passion or pick your career or industry right now, or next month, or next year, or in ten years. You're not late. You're not going to be screwed if you don't specialize soon. You haven't lost too much time.
That might sound like odd advice from someone who's always telling people that they don't need to wait to get started on an awesome career. Get out of the classroom, get into the real world, start building a career today, don't wait for permission or hope for opportunity to create. Yes, that's the kind of stuff that I normally say. And it's all true.
That's some good stuff right there. In fact, read it again. It's that good. No, you know what?
I'll read it again for you. Get out of the classroom, get into the real world, start building a great career today, don't wait for permission or hope for opportunity, create stuff. So how can, don't rush and don't wait be equally true? Because they apply to different things.
Rushing to find the things that are interesting to you. If you're bored or unhappy or doing something that will force you to be bored or unhappy in the future, rush to the exit right now. If you know there's something interesting and exciting, rush to start it today. After exiting the crappy situation, don't rush to find the perfect path.
If you know what it is, go for it with a bandon. But if you don't, stop feeling guilty about it. As long as you're not doing stuff you hate, you're moving roughly in the right direction. Each step you take away from lameness is a step towards greatness, even though greatness remains mostly undefined.
The worst of both worlds is rushing into something you hate because you fear you'll get behind if you don't. I hate this school or job, but I have to get started and complete it as soon as possible so I don't miss out on career opportunities. That's backwards. Chill out, slow down, don't jump into something dull and painful when you don't even know when or how it will result in something great.
The number of times I've seen people go to a school or study a major or take a job that they absolutely hate, even though they don't have any clear plan about how it's going to get them to something better because they feel like they have to be doing something and if they don't do that they'll get behind. Well, how is doing something that you hate getting you closer to something that you don't? Run from dreary as fast as you can and when you're free, don't rush to find some specific next thing that will prematurely lock you in. Just don't do something you hate.
Think about people in terrible romantic relationships. You know the type. After finally exiting via terrible breakup, they desperately rush right back into a relationship with the first person they find. Fear of missing out is no way to pick a partner and it's no way to plot a path to a career and life of happiness.
The number of great thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs who didn't get started until their 40s, 50s, or beyond is staggering. The average age of a startup founder is 40 and averages don't define you anyway. You could be 60. Who cares?
Run as fast as you can from stuff you hate. Patiently do interesting things whether or not you get paid for it. Continue this process of whittling away the stuff that doesn't make you feel alive and trying everything interesting with no artificial deadlines or timetables for when you've got to settle in on something or decide what you want to be when you grow up. Rush to escape bad.
Don't rush to create perfect. Let it emerge through the gate of interesting. Hey, this was published here at Crash.co. I read it with a few dramatic flourishes and added a few sentences.
But if you want to find articles like this and much, much more, including some really, really robust comprehensive guides to starting your career in sales, marketing, customer success, design, operations, and software engineering, we have guides for each of those. We have hundreds of articles, podcast episodes, a career personality quiz, and a way to create beautiful video pitches and skills profiles, all on Crash.co, all free. Check it out. Thanks for listening.
Like what you hear? Go to Crash.co and join the career revolution. Do you want to share your own career Crash story, send it directly to me at Isaac at Crash.co. Thanks for listening.
Bye.