Your career will last 80,000 hours
Two big ideas to ponder:
80,000 hours and identity foreclosure.
The first number, 80,000 hours, is the average amount of time most of us will spend working in our career across our lifetime!
The second term, identity foreclosure, comes from cognitive science and refers to the idea that we can get very settled in a certain identity, which limits us from exploring and getting curious about ourselves in other roles.
What do these two ideas have in common?
If we have 80,000 hours to spend in our career, there's a high chance we're going to try on or evolve into multiple professional identities across that time span, and it's unlikely it will be a linear progression.
If we foreclose or get stuck in a particular professional identity, that's problematic given the fact we move on from our professional identity at some point. If we can't or don't want to let go of a certain work identity, it will strangle our ability to grow.
Why aren't these concepts more well known?
We have to get comfortable with the notion that we constantly need to revisit WHO we are/are becoming in our work.
This is a natural part of the career development process, and it needs to be embedded in every career advice framework from the time we're very young.
And, skills are different then identities. If we're upskilling and reskilling, then we are also shifting our identity.
The core messages here are...
We have a lot of time in our career to grow, change, and adapt who we are. It is NORMAL and healthy to change who we are in our work alongside skill and talent development.
Some people will only accumulate identities in their career, borrowing or transferring lessons and skills from one identity and applying it the next. However, other people will compound their identities, like compound interest. When identities have more than additive value together (for instance 1+1= 3), this is where hybrid professional identity comes into play.
We need to see professional identity as a critical component of the professional development process to minimize identity foreclosure/identity crisis situations. Currently, identity tends to be neglected or absent from professional development literature.
We have to train ourselves to understand identity is malleable, not fixed. We should openly discuss the importance of undergoing multiple identity transitions in our lifetime as part of the overarching story of how our careers evolve and how we see ourselves in our career.
Takeaway questions to ponder...
Knowing we have roughly 80,000 hours to create and mold our careers, how does that reshape what your career means?
What if you could be 10% more intentional in how you use your professional identity or see yourself in your work? That's 800 hours of time focused on WHO you are instead of just "doing" work!
With this information, how will you shift your approach to your career and your mindset around your professional identity?
How might the workforce use this idea of "career time" to create new narratives, trainings, and philosophies around career development?
What other suggestions come to mind? Email your thoughts.