Taking a fresh look at your career

13.1 Are you choosing a career—or someone else’s definition of success?

Someone has spent years in an industry. His position has risen, and his income is far more secure than when he started. Now he has been given an even more impressive title. By the familiar account of career success, he is moving up again. His business card looks better; people have more to say when they introduce him. Yet when he sits down to consider it, his first question is not “Is the title impressive enough?” He asks something else: What can I actually decide? Is more of my time becoming my own? Does the way I earn my income justify the pressure I carry? If I follow this path for another three years, will I become more like the person I want to be, or simply occupy a more impressive position? These questions are inconvenient. Their answers do not appear on a business card. But if external recognition keeps rising while those answers keep getting worse, sooner or later we face a more basic question: Is my career progressing, or is the appearance of success simply becoming more complete?

One of the most persuasive illusions a career offers is that rising indicators mean an improving life.

Many career goals were never ours to begin with

Why does this illusion arise so readily at work? Careers are easy to compare. Positions have ranks. Incomes have numbers. Companies and teams have sizes; employers have reputations. Entrepreneurs can compare scale, funding, and growth. These measures are real and often important. The difficulty is how easily they become our default answers. From school onward, we learn a familiar sequence: better grades, a better school, a stronger organization to work in, a higher position, more money. Naturally, we learn to pursue what our surroundings repeatedly reward. One day we may find that we are very good at striving for “better,” yet have rarely asked who defined it. Many career goals are inherited by default rather than consciously chosen.