Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are going
to perform a bit of a psychological autopsy on
a concept that probably dominates, what, 70 %
of your waking life? Oh, yeah. It's a word you
have likely used maybe five times just today
without actually thinking about what it means.
It dictates your schedule, it often dictates
your bank account balance, and... Let's be honest,
for better or worse, it dictates a huge chunk
of your self -worth. We are talking about the
career. It is the absolute elephant in the room
of modern adulthood. It truly is. We organize
our entire existence around it. We stress over
it. We, you know, we plan for it decades in advance.
Right. Yet we rarely stop to actually pick it
up, turn it over and ask. What actually is this
thing? Is it a ladder? Is it a trap? Is it a
calling? What are we even talking about? Exactly.
And that's the thing. If I stop someone on the
street right now, someone rushing to get a coffee
before a 9 .00 a .m. meeting and asked, what
is a career? They'd probably look at me like
I'm an idiot and say, it's my job. Or maybe it's
what I do to pay the mortgage. But we have a
massive stack of research here today, and it's
spanning etymology, organizational psychology,
Roman history, sociology. It's all in there.
It's all in there. And it all suggests that a
career is something radically different than
just a job. It is a complex journey through learning,
work, and, well, life. It is distinct. And the
mission for this deep dive is to deconstruct
the modern career. We want to understand where
the word actually comes from. And I promise you,
the origin story is a lot more violent than you'd
expect. Oh, I'm excited for that part. We want
to look at how we choose these paths or maybe
how we are forced into them, why we abandon them,
and ultimately how we actually measure if a career
is successful when the old yard sticks. The gold
watch. The gold watch, the corner office. they've
basically evaporated okay so i want to start
with that violent origin story you tease in the
pre -show notes because when i was reading through
the etymological roots my jaw just it hit the
floor right i think most of us when we visualize
a career we see a ladder yeah it's steady it's
vertical you climb one rung you stabilize you
feel safe you climb the next yeah it's a very
safe image as long as you don't look down it
is it's orderly it's predictable but the word
itself implies something totally different, something
chaotic. It does. That latter metaphor is actually
a very recent invention. It's mostly from the
corporate structures of the mid -20th century,
you know, the organization man era. Right. But
if you dig into the linguistic roots, the word
career comes from the Latin carus. Carus. And
carus doesn't mean office or work or status.
It means a chariot. A chariot, like Ben -Hur's
style. A war machine. Exactly. Ben -Hur, gladiator,
the Colosseum, that's the energy. And if you
follow that thread into Middle French, you get
the word catarrière. Catarrière, okay. Which
meant a road, or more specifically, a race course.
And then by the 1530s, the definition in common
usage was a running at full speed. A running
at full speed? That feels frantic. It sounds
exhausting. It is frantic. And that's the entire
point. Originally, a career wasn't a structure
you climbed safely. It was a track you raced
on. It implies momentum, high speed, and a very
specific trajectory for wheeled vehicles. So
it's inherently dangerous. It's dangerous. It's
fast. It's all about forward motion, not the
sort of careful vertical elevation. And historically,
if you fell out of the chariot, you didn't just
lose your job. You got run over. You got run
over by everyone else who was still in it. the
race. That completely recontextualizes the anxiety
so many of us feel. Because if you think about
how we talk about careers today, even now, we
say things like my career is careening out of
control or my career is really taking off. Hmm.
Kinetic terms. They're kinetic terms. They still
hold that old chariot energy. We haven't fully
shaken it. Absolutely. And that's why the feeling
of being stuck is so deeply painful to us. If
you are on a ladder and you just stay up climbing,
you're just standing still, you're safe. You
can catch your breath. But if you are in a chariot
race and you stop, you crash, the momentum is
essential to the very definition. The lack of
it is disaster. So when did we trade in the chariot
for, you know, the LinkedIn profile? When did
it become this course of professional life that
feels so much more tame? That semantic shift
is surprisingly recent. The online etymology
dictionary pins the modern meaning course of
one's public or professional life to around 1803.
1803, that's really not that long ago. Not at
all in the grand scheme of things. We start to
see it popping up in text referencing things
like Goethe's literary career or a general business
career. So really the way we use the word today
in this sort of white -collar professional sense
is only about 200 years old. Which coincides
pretty neatly with the Industrial Revolution
and the rise of the modern organization. workforce
precisely the industrial revolution accelerated
everything suddenly life wasn't just about seasons
or harvest cycles it was about production speed
output the clock became the new sun we needed
a word to describe the long -term trajectory
of a worker in this new industrialized economy
so we borrowed the word for racecourse it was
the perfect metaphor for the time that makes
so much sense Okay, so let's try to pin down
some definitions for a second. We have the chariot
race origin, but how does a modern dictionary
define it? The Oxford English Dictionary calls
it a person's course or progress through life
or a distinct portion of life. It's incredibly
broad, isn't it? It's so broad. That sounds more
like a biography than a job description. My career
as a teenager learning guitar is part of it.
By definition, it is broad and that breadth is
crucial. It acknowledges that a career isn't
just the hours you are paid for. It's the container
for the life you live. But then you have the
organizational behavior researcher, the people
who actually study this for a living. Exactly.
The people who study how humans function in economies.
And they have a much more specific and I think
the much more useful definition. OK, what's that?
They define it as a unique pattern of work related
experiences, both inside and outside organizations
over a total lifespan. Okay, both inside and
outside. That's a key distinction. Let's break
that down. It is the absolute game changer in
how we should think about this. Inside is your
nine to five at the bank. That's the obvious
part. Right. But outside is your side hustle.
Your volunteering, the classes you take at night,
your periods of unemployment, your time spent
raising children or caring for a parent. All
of that is part of the career. So it's not just
the time you spend at Company X from 2015 to
2020. No, that's just one data point in a much
larger pattern. So if I get laid off and I spend
six months learning to bake sourdough bread and
applying for jobs, that is not a gap in my career
on my resume. No. That is the career. Exactly.
It is part of the unique pattern. The old model,
the latter model, viewed unemployment as a void
or a break in the career, a failure. A black
mark. A black mark. Exactly. The modern model
views it as just another phase of the race course.
It might be a pit stop or a flat tire, but you
are still on the track. You're still moving forward
just in a different way. That is a relief to
hear. Honestly, because that gap on the resume
is a source of so much anxiety for so many people.
But then we also have these colloquial terms
that kind of mess with our heads. We have terms
like career woman, which implies that work is
the central identity, maybe in opposition to
traditional domestic roles. Right. And it's so
telling that you rarely, if ever, hear the term
career man. Ever. Because for men, historically,
the career is assumed to be the default setting.
It's just the man. career woman carries a specific
sociological weight, a sense of making a choice
against a norm. And then, of course, we use the
word to describe these very specific sectors
like a criminal career or a career in the building
trade. A criminal career always sounds so oddly
organized to me. It does. Like there is a pension
plan for bank robbers if they hit their quarterly
KPIs. One would hope so. But essentially what
connects a criminal career to a medical career
is simply that it implies a long term commitment
and a process. of skill acquisition over time.
So it's about the long view. It's always about
the long view. We are looking at a concept that
has gone from a race course to a lifelong pattern
of experiences. So if the definition has shifted
so dramatically, the structure of it must have
shifted. Yeah. I want to move into the evolution
of the career because you mentioned earlier that
the latter is a relatively new idea. It is. What
was the model before the modern era? If you were
an ambitious person in, say, ancient Rome, what
did your career even look like? Was that even
a concept? It was, but it was incredibly rigid.
The Romans had a concept called the cursus honorum.
The cursus honorum. Sounds fancy. It translates
to the course of honors. And this was the sequential,
unchangeable order of public offices held by
aspiring politicians in the Roman Republic and
the early empire. It was a conveyor belt. Conveyor
belt. There's no skipping steps. Zero. You served
as a military tribune. Then you became a quaestor.
Then an aedile. Then a praetor. And then finally,
if you were extremely lucky and very well connected,
a consul. The talk job. And you couldn't just
you couldn't hack the system. You couldn't be
a brilliant young upstart and jump straight to
CEO or consul. Absolutely not. There were minimum
age requirements for each and every step. There
were mandatory gaps between holding different
offices. The whole system was designed to prevent
rapid ascents to power. So it wasn't about finding
your passion or disrupting the industry. Not
even a little bit. It was about fulfilling a
predestined structural role in society. You didn't
design the career. The career was designed for
you and you just had to fit into the slot. That
sounds incredibly stifling to us now with our
emphasis on choice and individuality. But I have
to imagine there was a certain comfort in that.
You knew exactly what came next. There was no
ambiguity. There was immense security in it.
Absolutely. And for centuries, for the average
person, not just the Roman elites, the career
was even simpler. It was doing what your father
did. Right. You're a blacksmith's son, so you're
a blacksmith. Exactly. If your dad was a blacksmith,
you were a blacksmith. The concept of choice,
of picking your own path, is a profound luxury
of the modern era. We forget how new that is.
So what broke that chain? What was the catalyst?
Was it just the Industrial Revolution? It was
a combination of two main things, really. First,
the explosion of specialized professions that
came with industrialization and technology. And
second... The democratization of education. Let's
take those one by one. The specialized professions.
Well, suddenly you didn't just have three options.
Soldier, priest, farmer. You had thousands of
specializations. Engineer, accountant, factory
manager, telegraph operator, typesetter. The
list just exploded. And with widespread literacy
and public education. You had a workforce that
was theoretically capable of moving between them.
They could learn new skills. And this shift,
this sudden explosion of choice, is actually
what created the need for career counselors and
career advisors. Right, of course. Because if
there's only one road, you don't need a map or
a GPS. But if there are a thousand roads branching
off in every direction. You need a guide. You
need someone to help you read the map. Those
roles didn't exist when the past was rigid because
you didn't need advice. You just needed to do
what you were told. And now it feels like we've
accelerated past even that. We are in the era
of what the notes call the hybrid identity. Yes.
And looking at the source material from economist
Richard Florida, he talks about this a lot, particularly
when he discusses the creative class. So what
is that hybrid identity? In the late 20th and
early 21st centuries, we started seeing a big
shift away from the singular noun. It used to
be, I am a lawyer. I am a teacher. Full style.
Her whole identity in one word. Exactly. But
now professional identities have become hyphenated
or hybridized. It became not just common, but
almost expected to have dual or multiple careers,
either one after another or sometimes at the
same time. It's the classic I'm an actor waiter,
but now it's more like I'm a data scientist,
podcaster, beekeeper. Right. We are no longer
just one thing. And that reflects a deep shift
in the work ethic itself. I think. on some level
we don't necessarily trust one single institution
to hold our entire identity anymore we've seen
what happens that's a really good point it's
a form of diversification it's identity diversification
as a hedge against instability If my data science
job gets automated, I still have my podcast and
my bees. That is a brilliant way to put it. But
this brings us to the paradox of choice. If we
have all these options, hyphens, slashes, thousands
of distinct paths, how on earth do we actually
choose? When I'm sitting there staring at a job
offer or a college application, what is actually
happening in my brain? This is where we get deep
into the psychology of choice. And there is a
researcher named Belling who did some foundational
work on this. He broke down how people decide
to join a firm or pick a path into three specific
theories. And I want you and everyone listening
to think about which one of these you think you
are. All right, I'm ready. Let's unpack these.
Theory number one. Theory number one is the objective
factor theory. This assumes that the applicant,
so you, the listener, is a rational, logical
being. A true homo economicus. A dangerous assumption
right off the bat. A very dangerous assumption.
But under this theory, you view the job choice
like it's a spreadsheet. You are weighing the
tangible benefits. What is the salary? What are
the health benefits? What's the commute? Where
is it located? What are the concrete opportunities
for advancement? So you assign a score to each
category. You do a cost benefit analysis. The
math spins out an answer and you take the job.
Precisely. It's a purely rational calculation.
Collegial. Yeah. Spock would choose a career
this way. I think we all pretend to do this.
We all make the pro con list. We make the spreadsheet.
Yeah. But I have rarely seen anyone actually
follow the math if their gut says otherwise.
And that is the perfect lead in to theory number
two, the subjective factor theory. OK. This one
suggests that the decision making process is
actually dominated by social and psychological
factors. It's emotional. It's not about the money.
It's about the status. So it's about what the
job says about me. Exactly. What is the reputation
of the organization? How will I feel? Telling
people at my high school reunion that I work
there, does the brand name confer a certain kind
of prestige? This is the cool kid factor. You
know, working for a famous tech company or a
prestigious magazine because it makes you feel
successful, even if the pay is lower or the hours
are absolutely brutal. It's all about identity
alignment. Am I the kind of person who works
at this kind of place? The feeling is more important
than the facts. That feels very real. And the
third one. And then we have theory number three.
The critical contact theory. This one, when I
read it in the notes, it sounded the most relatable
to me, the most human. It often is. This theory
argues that your final decision is heavily, heavily
influenced by your specific interactions with
the organization during the hiring process. How
they treat you. Exactly. Because you can't truly
know what a job is like from the outside. You
use these small micro interactions as a proxy
for the entire culture. Was the recruiter nice
and responsive? Did they reply to your email
promptly? Was the receptionist rude when you
came in for the interview? I have absolutely
turned down a job because the interviewer was
15 minutes late and didn't apologize. And I just
thought, if this is how they treat a guest, someone
they're trying to impress, how on earth do they
treat an actual employee? And that is critical
contact theory in perfect action. Bieling notes
that this is actually more valid for experienced
professionals. Why is that? Well, when you're
just starting out, you might put up with a rude
interviewer because you just need a job. But
when you have more options, more career capital,
which we'll get to later, you start looking at
how they treat you as a key indicator of the
culture. You have the leverage to be picky about
that. So we have the rational spreadsheet, the
status seeker. And the vibe check. That's a great
way to summarize it. But here is where it gets
really interesting. Or maybe a little bit depressing.
These theories, all three of them, they operate
under one massive assumption. And what's that?
They all assume we have a choice. Correct. And
that is the massive caveat we have to place on
this entire discussion. These theories assume
free will and a marketplace of abundance. But
the reality for so many people is that scarcity
plays a huge role. It's the dominant role. It
can be. Many people, perhaps most people at some
point in their lives, accept a career simply
because that is the work that is available to
them. They aren't weighing objective or subjective
factors. They are weighing rent versus no rent.
Food on the table versus no food on the table.
The choice is made for you by necessity. Exactly.
And that's a reality we can't ignore. And there's
a cultural layer to this as well, right? The
notes mention Ott Holland and some colleagues
of theirs, and they look at how culture impacts
this whole process. career choice. Yes. What
did they find? They found that culture impacts
career choice significantly, and they specifically
looked at the spectrum of collectivism versus
individualism. Okay, so a culture focused on
the group versus a culture focused on the self.
Precisely. In highly individualistic cultures
like the U .S. or the U .K., the focus is often
on questions like, what do I want? What matches
my passion? What will make me feel fulfilled?
The follow your bliss model. Right. But in more
collectivist cultures, the decision is often
framed very differently. The questions might
be, what brings honor to my family? Or what does
my community need from me? Or what is the most
stable path to support my parents? So if you're
listening to this and feeling this immense guilt
that you aren't following your passion, you might
just be operating under a different and equally
valid cultural framework. Absolutely. The idea
that passion is the only valid career driver
is a very culturally specific and very recent.
Idea. Duty is a valid career driver. Stability
is a valid career driver. Community need is a
valid career driver. That's a really important
thing to name. So, OK, let's assume for a moment
that you do have some agency, some degree of
choice, and you are trying to navigate this.
How should you choose? The source material references
a list from U .S. News on practical considerations.
It's a bit of a checklist for the modern worker.
Yeah, and it's a good grounding exercise to pull
you out of the abstract. They list things like
your natural talents and your work style. Are
you a deep focus introvert or a collaborative
extrovert? Don't pick a job that requires eight
hours of presenting if you hate public speaking.
That seems obvious, but people do it all the
time. They do. And it goes on to list specific
needs. What kind of work -life balance do you
truly need? Are you comfortable being in the
public eye? And a big one. Stress tolerance.
Oh, stress tolerance is the one I think everyone
ignores. They see the high paying job, the fancy
title, but they don't stop to ask, do I have
the nervous system to handle this high pressure
environment day in and day out? Exactly. And
of course, financial goals are on the list. But
I really like the piece of advice they tag on
to the end of that list. And it's so important.
It's basically you don't have to stick with a
line of work forever. Make the best decision
for who you are today. That is the crucial takeaway,
isn't it? The pressure that we put on 22 -year
-olds to choose the perfect career that will
last them for 40 years is paralyzing and completely
unrealistic. It's an impossible task. The modern
advice is to pick a path that feels right for
who you are now, knowing that future you can
and likely will change your mind. The career
is a series of sprints, not one long marathon
on a single track. And speaking of future you
changing their mind, let's pivot. Pun. Absolutely
intended to the concept of changing careers because
the data on this is wild. It's truly staggering.
So the U .S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has this
long running study, a massive one called the
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. They've
been tracking people from youth into adulthood
for decades. They found that individuals between
the ages of 18 and 38 will hold more than 10
jobs. 10 jobs by age 38. That is, on average,
a new job every two years. Every two years. The
days of getting the gold watch for 40 years of
loyal service at one plant are effectively dead.
It's a fossil. They are. I mean, my grandfather
worked at one company his entire life. My father
worked at maybe three. I've worked at... More
than that, the pace of change is just accelerating.
It is. And what's even more fascinating or maybe
alarming, depending on your perspective, is the
amount of time we spend looking for the next
thing, even when we have a thing. Time .com reported
that as of 2008, one out of three employed people
spends about one hour per day searching for another
position. Wait, one out of three? And that's
employed people? Employed people. So while they're
at work. On company time, being paid for their
current career, a third of them are dedicating
significant mental energy and time to leaving
that career. That is a huge amount of underlying
churn. It's like quiet quitting before we had
a catchy name for it. It's loud looking. Loud
looking. I like that. So why are we leaving?
What are the push factors that are driving this
constant churn? Well, a survey by a firm called
Wright Management gives us a really clear breakdown.
And the number one reason, by a pretty wide margin,
it's not boredom. It's not pay. It's downsizing
or restructuring. Fifty four percent of people
change careers because the organization changed
around them or flat out removed them. Wow. So
more than half the time it is not a choice. Not
at all. It's the chariot wheel falling off because
the track collapsed. It's an external force that
you have little to no control over. That's a
crucial point. We talk about career management
as this act of personal agency. But for half
the people. The big pivot is something that happens
to them, not something they choose. Precisely.
But when it is a choice, the reasons are incredibly
telling about what we value at work. Okay, so
what are the top voluntary reasons? Number one
is the desire for new challenges or new opportunities.
That's at 30%. People get bored. They want to
learn and grow. That makes sense. But look at
the next two. 25 % say ineffective leadership
and 22 % say they have a poor relationship with
their direct manager. People leave bosses, not
jobs. We hear that all the time. And there it
is. The data backs it up completely. It really
does. Combine those two and you have a huge chunk
of people leaving because of the people in charge.
What else is on that list? Also high on the list,
work -life balance at 21 % and lack of recognition
also at 21%. And what's interesting is what's
lower down, financial instability of the organization
is only at 13%. That's fascinating. So people
will stick with a sinking ship if they like the
captain and feel appreciated. But they'll jump
right off a perfectly sturdy, profitable ship
if the captain is a tyrant who doesn't respect
their time. That is a really profound insight
into human nature, isn't it? Yes. We value relational
safety and psychological well -being, sometimes
even more than structural or financial safety.
It also highlights the fact that changing occupations
is now considered an expected normal part of
career management. Both people and labor markets
change over a lifetime. Right. Your values change.
The skills you have at 25 might be obsolete by
the time you're 35, or you might just not care
about the same things anymore. You might prioritize
adventure in your 20s and stability in your 40s.
Exactly. The career has to be flexible enough
to accommodate the fact that a human being is
not a static object you evolve so your work has
to evolve with you so okay we've established
that careers are fluid they're often short term
they're driven by this mix of necessity and desire
this leads us to the hardest most philosophical
question of all how do we define success Because
if I'm changing jobs every two years, I'm probably
not climbing that linear ladder to the CEO spot.
So what does winning even look like anymore?
where the biggest and most important shift in
career theory has happened in the last 50 years.
We have to draw a very clear line between objective
success and subjective success. OK, break that
down for us. What's the difference? Objective
success is all the verifiable facts. It's the
stuff you can put on a census form or your LinkedIn
profile. It's your earnings, either in absolute
terms or relative to where you started. It's
your status, your job title, the number of promotions
you've had. So it's the external markers, the
things your parents can brag about to their friends.
LinkedIn metrics. Exactly. It's what society
can see and measure from the outside. But subjective
success is completely internal. It's your own
private feelings about your work. Like job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction, a work -life balance, a sense
of personal achievement, a feeling of purpose.
Is your work consistent with your own values?
Do you actually like the person you have to be
when you are at work? And the source material
suggests that the weight, the importance, has
shifted dramatically from the Objective to the
subjective. Historically, yes, absolutely. In
the 1950s and 60s, we had what the researcher
Donald Super called the linear career stage model.
In that world, the definition of success was
owned and controlled by the organization. You
worked for one firm, maybe two your whole life.
Success meant moving up the hierarchy. If you
got promoted, you were successful. If you stall,
you failed. End of story. That was the organization
man era. Your identity was the company's identity.
Right. But because jobs for life are largely
gone, thanks to the sheer speed of economic and
technological change, the organization can no
longer promise you that ladder. They can't guarantee
you a path to the top. So because the company
can't promise me a title anymore. The responsibility
for career management and for defining what success
even means has reverted back to the individual.
So because the company can't promise me a C -suite
office, I have to promise myself happiness instead.
In a way, yes. We have to prioritize subjective
criteria because the objective ones are too volatile
and largely out of our control. But there is
a huge trap here, a modern digital trap. And
what's that? It's the comparison trap. Oh, I
know this trap well. Instagram and LinkedIn are
basically built on this trap. Exactly. A person's
assessment of their own success is so heavily
influenced by social comparisons. You might feel
great about your subjective success. You love
your work. You have time for your kids. You sleep
eight hours a night. You feel balanced and happy.
Until you log on and see that a friend from college
just made partner at a law firm and bought a
boat. And suddenly your subjective success feels
small and inadequate because you're measuring
it against their objective success. That. That
is deadly. Comparison is the thief of career
satisfaction. It's a game you can't win because
there's always someone with a bigger boat. Always.
So how do we armor ourselves against that? The
expert notes mention a concept that I find incredibly
useful. It's called career capital. I think this
is a really powerful framework for listeners
to visualize their own net worth beyond just
money. OK, I like that. Career capital. Let's
break it down. Yes. This comes from a group of
researchers, Arnold and colleagues, and they
argue that success isn't just one thing. It's
a portfolio of four different types of capital
that you build over time. A portfolio. OK, let's
go through the four types. This feels like the
blinkest nugget of the episode. Right. First
is economic capital. That's the obvious one.
It's your money, your assets, your financial
resources. This gives you a safety net and allows
you to access other resources like more education
or starting a business. Simple enough. Money.
Next. Second is human capital. This is what you
can do. It's your skills, your knowledge, your
experiences, your qualifications. And the key
here is that even if you lose your job and your
salary, your economic capital, you keep your
human capital. Right. They can take away the
paycheck, but they can't take away the knowledge.
It's the goose that lays the golden egg. Exactly.
It's portable. Third is social capital. This
is who you know. It's the depth and the breadth
of your professional and personal network. Can
you pick up the phone and get an introduction?
Do people in your industry trust you and vouch
for you? That's huge. And the fourth one. The
fourth is cultural capital. Now, this one's a
bit more subtle, but it's incredibly important.
It's knowing how to be. How to be? It's the attitudes,
the general know -how, the ability to operate
effectively in a specific context. It's knowing
which fork to use at the client dinner or how
to navigate office politics without making enemies
or understanding the unspoken rules and jargon
of an industry. That is fascinating because you
can have incredibly high human capital. You could
be a genius coder. But if you have low cultural
capital and you don't know how to interact with
the team or present your ideas in a meeting,
you might fail. Exactly. Or the reverse. You
might have very high social capital, you know,
everyone. But if you have low human capital,
no actual skills, then eventually you'll be exposed
as just being a good networker. So true career
success, a resilient career. involves building
a balanced portfolio of all four. Precisely.
And I love that framework because it gives you
different buckets to fill. Maybe this year isn't
about maximizing your economic capital. Maybe
you take a pay cut for a new role. But you are
massively increasing your human or social capital
by learning new skills and meeting new people.
It turns you into an active investor in your
own life, not just a passive earner. Exactly.
Now, there's one more point on success I want
to touch on, and it's about timing. We have some
notes here from Arthur C. Brooks regarding when
we actually peak in our careers. Yes, and this
is a really important reality check for everyone.
Professional success, at least the objective
kind, tends to peak at different times for different
fields. So it's not a universal timeline. Not
at all. In fields that rely heavily on what's
called fluid intelligence problem solving, abstract
reasoning like theoretical physics or pure mathematics,
the peak often comes very early. The big aha
moments tend to happen in your 20s or early 30s.
Young genius archetype. Wonderkind. Right. But
in fields that rely on crystallized intelligence,
synthesized wisdom, accumulated knowledge like
teaching, history, or management, success often
peaks much later in life, in your 50s or 60s.
So the warning here is... Don't panic if you
haven't invented a new branch of physics by the
time you're 25. Unless you're a theoretical physicist,
then maybe panic a little. But for most of us,
our best work might still be decades away. And
what's the flip side of that? The flip side is
a warning for the early peakers. Brooks warns
that early success can breed deep disappointment
if your entire self -worth is tied to that initial
achievement. You have to be ready to evolve to
become a teacher or a mentor. You have to be
ready for a long second act. That's great advice.
So we've covered the history. the psychology,
the definitions of success. Now, I want to get
really practical for a bit. Let's talk about
the infrastructure around careers, the support
systems, the role of education, and the terminology
we use. Let's do it. Let's start with the big
one. The ROI of education. Is the degree worth
the debt? The data is. It's nuanced. Generally,
yes, education pays off. Some key research shows
that adding just one year of schooling beyond
high school increases a worker's wages by an
average of 17 .8 percent. 17 .8 percent for one
year. That's a massive return on investment for
that first year of college or trade school. It's
huge. But and this is a big. But there's a plateau.
A point of diminishing returns. Exactly. The
same research shows that additional years beyond
nine or ten years of total schooling, so getting
into very advanced post -grad territory like
multiple master's degrees or a Ph .D., have little
to no effect on the average worker's wages. Obviously,
that varies by field, right? Yeah. You need the
years to be a surgeon or a tenured professor.
Of course. There are exceptions. But for the
general population, the biggest bang for your
buck is in those first few years of post -secondary
education. And the cost is the other side of
that whole equation. That's the part that's changed
so much. Right. The career you choose must pay
well enough to offset the cost of the education
required to enter it. And this is the modern
crisis of student debt in a nutshell. We are
seeing people acquire massive educational debt
for careers. particularly in the helping professions
or the arts, that historically do not generate
the economic capital to service that debt. The
structural problem. So how do we learn to navigate
this incredibly complex system? We aren't born
knowing how to manage a career. No, we're not.
And that's where the whole field of career support
comes in. There's a framework that's often used
in career education called the DOTS model. DOTS.
What does that stand for? It stands for decision
learning. which is learning how to actually make
choices. Opportunity awareness, knowing what
jobs and paths actually exist out there. Transition
learning, knowing how to move from school to
work or from job to job. And self -awareness,
knowing who you are, what you value, what you're
good at. D -O -T -S. I feel like most high schools
and colleges focus almost entirely on the O,
opportunity awareness. 100%. You know, here's
a job fair with 100 booths. They just throw opportunities
at you. but they totally ignore the D and the
S, the decision learning and the self -awareness
parts. And that is a very common and very valid
criticism. We inundate students with what's called
labor market information or LMI. Nursing is a
growing field. Tech is hot right now, but we
don't give them the tools to assess if they would
actually like being a nurse or working in tech.
We teach them what to choose from, but not how
to choose. Perfectly said. We also have that
list of support types here in the notes. You've
got information, assessments, counseling, and
education. education. The assessments are interesting.
The Myers -Briggs, the strong interest inventory.
Yeah, and they can be useful tools. They can
be quantitative or qualitative. They try to match
your personality and your values to certain careers.
But again, they are just tools. They're suggestions,
not prophecies. Right. A test can tell you that
you have the right traits to be a good architect,
but it can't tell you if you'll enjoy the day
-to -day reality of arguing with clients and
navigating zoning laws. Exactly. It's one piece
of the puzzle, not the other. whole picture.
OK, before we wrap up and bring this all home,
I want to do a quick round on terminology because
career is the big overarching word. But we have
all these colorful color terms that describe
the specific tribes we fall into. The caste system
of work. Kind of. So I'm going to throw a color
at you and you give me the snapshot of what it
means. Let's do it. Blue collar. Manual labor.
The working class. Historically, this meant factory
or industrial work, but now it covers a huge
range of highly skilled trades electricians,
plumbers, mechanics. And it's often mistakenly
viewed as unskilled. But you try fixing a high
voltage power line and then tell me it's unskilled.
Point taken. Okay, white collar. Office work.
administrative, managerial, professional jobs.
This was the suit and tie crowd historically,
though now it's probably more like a Patagonia
vest crowd. This is also the sector that's feeling
the most heat from AI right now. Good point.
Next up, pink collar. This refers to the service
and care -oriented work, fields like nursing,
teaching, secretarial work, childcare. It's called
pink collar because these fields were historically
dominated by women. The color coding is obviously
outdated and a bit problematic, but the sector
itself is absolutely essential to the economy.
Absolutely. How about a newer one? Green collar.
This is the environmental sector. Jobs in renewable
energy, conservation, sustainability, green tech.
It's a rapidly growing and incredibly important
part of the future economy. Next, gold collar.
This refers to highly skilled knowledge workers,
people like doctors, lawyers, specialized scientists,
top tier engineers. These are people whose high
human capital commands a massive premium in the
market. Okay, no collar. I like this one. This
is for the artists, the free spirits, the passion
followers. It often includes the gig economy
workers who kind of reject the traditional nine
to five structure entirely in favor of freedom
and flexibility. And finally, a term that isn't
a color, but it feels incredibly important for
our current moment, the precariat. Yes. This
is a modern sociological term, and it's a blend
of the words precarious and proletariat. Precarious
proletariat. Right. It refers to a growing class
of people who are living a precarious existence
without any job security. They might be working
three different gig economy jobs, but they have
no benefits, no contract security, no paid time
off, and absolutely no predictability in their
income. It's the dark side of the so -called
flexible economy. That is a really sobering note
to end that list on. It's a stark reminder that
while we're sitting here talking about choice
and self -actualization for a huge and growing
chunk of the population, the career is just a
desperate survival mechanism. It is. And we must
never lose sight of that privilege gap when we
have these conversations. So let's try to bring
this all home. Let's synthesize this journey.
We started with the chariot race, all about speed.
danger, and relentless momentum. We move through
the rigid Roman cursus honorum and the predictable
corporate ladders of the 1950s. And now we find
ourselves here in the era of the hyphenated,
hybrid, sometimes precarious career. The biggest
takeaway for me when you lay it all out like
that is the fundamental shift in agency. The
old stability is gone. The company will not take
care of you. The job for life is a myth. Which
sounds scary. It sounds terrifying, but the flip
side is that individual agency has increased
exponentially. You are the architect now. You
have to be. And that means you also get to define
the terms of success. And that definition of
success has moved from the company's hands, the
corner office, the title, the objective markers,
to your hands. Subjective success. Are you happy?
Does this work fit the life you actually want
to live? Exactly. The power and the burden of
definition is now on you. I want to leave our
listeners with a final provocative thought to
chew on this week. We talked about that career
capital portfolio, the four buckets, social,
human, economic, and cultural. I want you to
take a quick, honest, mental inventory. A capital
audit, if you will. A capital audit, exactly.
If your industry was completely disrupted tomorrow,
if AI made your job obsolete, or if your company
just folded overnight, which of those capitals
do you actually have in the bank? It's a vital
question. Do you have a ton of skills? High human
capital, but you've neglected your network, so
you have no social capital. Do you have a lot
of money saved up? Economic capital, but no cultural
know -how to pivot into a new industry. It's
a vital audit to perform to see where you are
vulnerable and where you are strong. It's your
personal balance sheet. And ultimately, I want
you to go back to that original Latin root, the
chariot, the charis. It's moving fast. The track
is bumpy. The wheels are wobbling. The question
is, are you holding the reins and driving that
chariot where you want it to go? Or are you just
being dragged along the track behind it? Drive
the chariot. Don't be dragged. Thanks for listening
to The Deep Dive. We'll catch you on the next
one.