career – Heather Hoyt

What is the most important part of your career?

I’ve read quite a few books about productivity that talk about concepts such as mastery and flow: how to deep focus and get more done. In my career, I want to write clear papers with good arguments and be an expert in certain subjects. I want to be able to present and publish and eventually finish a dissertation.

However, at the opposite end of whatever work you do, there is someone else.

So the point of productivity may not be about accomplishing something and becoming the expert–it’s about affecting others. Maybe productivity isn’t really about mastery and flow. Productivity can be about connection and relationships instead.

Love is so much more important than expertise. Think about being a parent: it doesn’t really matter if you are an expert on parenting. It matters more that you love your kids.

And maybe that’s applicable to more areas than we think it is. You can easily see how it would matter in something like teaching or social work.

But what about something like writing and design work or policy work? How can prioritizing love and relationships make a difference there?

It seems like when we are creating something we are aimed at this product. But the product does not exist in a vacuum. The product is used by people. And so every project and product is also part of a relationship, between the creator and the user.

It can be hard to see that connection, but I think it makes the products so much better if a creator can see the relationships that surround what they create.

When we are young, we are told to dream. And then we grow up, and the world burns up our dreams and we have to figure out what to do with the charred remnants.

So I had a dream of being a writer when I was young. And then I grew up and discovered that my dream didn’t really exist. And I think this is true of most dream jobs: they only exist in dream land.

I’m currently going to graduate school in philosophy, and the job market for philosophy PhDs is absolutely brutal. Too many applicants. Not enough jobs. And the jobs don’t always fit right.

There is a friction there: On one side, there is what you want and who you are. On the other side, there is what other people want and need and what they are willing to pay you for. Those two sides don’t always match up very well.

So to achieve success, you have to do things you don’t want to do. And sometimes the success you thought you wanted isn’t worth it.

This friction manifests it in many other ways, which may become insurmountable obstacles to your dreams:

You get your dream job and discover you actually hate it.
Your dream job doesn’t actually exist in the world.
You have a specific skill set that doesn’t work for the job market.
Your skills are unappreciated by managers who want to go in different directions.
You have too narrow or too broad interests/skills for what employers or others want.
You can only get paid well for something you don’t love to do.
If you get paid for what you love to do, you might stop loving it.
You work hard in your job and never get recognized and never get promotions.
You love a certain field but you aren’t actually very skilled at it.

Job market friction can be like burning. It’s burning down your dreams.

So how do you deal with is?

Here are something helpful things to remember:

Who you are is not what you do
Your self-worth is not dependent on your financial worth
Small success can be as valuable as large success
Life can be longer than you think, and you can reinvent yourself multiple times
It’s okay to change your pathway
Relationships with people bring more joy than achieving success
Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to do the things that you do want to do
Having a small impact can be good enough

Tag: career

Connection over Mastery

Friction between dreams and reality