Motivation
Decisions about what to do in our future and career are some of the most complex, difficult decisions we make. Despite the importance of deep thinking in this area, it’s actually really hard to find people and resources that help us strategize and think through decision frameworks. Career services offer conversations and advice, but they don’t explain their worldview and assumptions or delve deep into motivations. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to access our values, life philosophies, and frameworks of the world – I wanted to offer a space and a series of questions to prompt college students to think more about this.
Product
Career conversations with people, mapping their lives. See a write-up with the frameworks and questions here.
Overview:
There are three main points of failure for college students thinking about careers.
Uncertain what their long term goals are. E.G. what legacy they want to leave, or what would make them feel fulfilled
Misalignment between short term goals and long term goals. E.G. optimizing for optionality when optimizing for risk-taking would be a better strategy to reach their long-term goals
Difficulty with tactical solutions. E.G. not sure how to land the job they want (this is what career services focuses on most)
My goal was to get people thinking about which of these stages was the biggest bottleneck for them, and ask them questions to provoke reflection. I worked with a small group of people for 1-2 hours each. I received positive feedback that the life mapping had been really useful for many of the people.
Feedback
“Life mapping helped me dig really deep into my identity and experiences to find out the core values that influence everything I do so I had more confidence that I was living intentionally.”
Learnings
Although I had no more experience than them (and signaled this clearly), being in a position of authority in the sessions caused people to seek my advice and opinion on their career decisions. This was slightly disconcerting, and a fascinating exercise in how confidence generates authority.
The most common theme amongst people I talked with was the conflict between what they truly want to do, and what prestige and status allocation tell them to do.
Peer effects are enormous and underrated. In circles where peers validated high-status pathways, people felt more drawn to those; in circles where they validated creative risky pathways, people felt more confident they would pursue those pathways.
