In anticipation of the new session, I’ve been writing some lessons on career advice. I started by explaining why you should master your career rather than try to run away from it. I argued that you need to build rare and valuable skills, which don’t come automatically. I also showed why working harder can actually backfire, if that becomes your source of competitive advantage.
The theme throughout all these lessons is that to have a great career, you need career capital. Skills, relationships and other assets that make you in demand.
However, while getting career capital isn’t trivial, and it’s the main thing that separates the desirability of different careers, it isn’t the only step to having work you’ll love. Having career capital isn’t enough, you need to actually use it to negotiate the lifestyle you want to live.
What Kind of Lifestyle Do You Really Want?
For a lot of people, they never step back and really ask themselves what kind of career they want. Instead, they act like ambitious rats in a Skinner box, pushing the right levers to get short-term career rewards, without asking whether they want to be in that box in the first place.