For the last decade, conversations around building a career have invariably included an emphasis on work as an extension of oneself. Somewhere in that discussion, many of us became convinced that a career isn’t a successful one if you aren’t exploring your passions or coming to work every day in love with your job. As a Millennial, I feel particularly connected to this narrative, because it’s one that so many professionals in my generation have come up against – as teenagers, we were told that the right way to build a good life was to attend university, explore our interests and come out with a job doing something about which we're passionate.
In my management consulting career, I've had the privilege of working with colleagues of all ages across a multitude of organizations. One thing I've learned through that experience is that so many of us are still searching for the "perfect" job or role, and feeling like failures if we haven't found it yet. I think this feeling of "professional listlessness" or malaise is so potent that if I could go back and say one thing about my career to 21-year-old me, it would be this: "Relax, give yourself some grace, and don’t let perfect be the enemy of good."
The 80/20 rule typically suggests that 80 percent of outcomes are the result of 20 percent of inputs, i.e., that a small subset of actions has an outsized impact on eventual consequences. For navigating careers, I've found a slight reinterpretation of this principle to be incredibly helpful: a good job should give you 80 percent of the satisfaction you need from a role, the additional 20 percent you work to find elsewhere in your life. In essence, it's challenging to have a job be completely reflective of the entirety of your passions and interests, so find one that gets you most of the way there.
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