First Five — Meaning of Career
This year marks the first five years of my professional career and I won’t let it slide without sharing the lessons and leveraging it as a baseline for my next five years.
For you, who are students, freshers, professionals with less than five years of experience, or even more than 15 years of experience but want to look back and reflect on your journey — I hope this note can be a little help to plan ahead or recenter your path.
Meaning of Career
When someone asked what career means, it left a big cognitive load for me but I know it was an important question that I got to answer.
What I do to answer it:
First, make it an even bigger question by asking yourself ‘What problem do you want to take part in?’
Second, chunk it into smaller parts of questions:
- What are your current abilities to be part of that solution?
- What potentials do you have to sharpen your abilities?
- From whom you can learn more in solving that problem?
- With whom you can collaborate in solving that problem?
- What gaps do you need to fill in solving that problem?
It is important to note that the definition of ‘problem’ can be very contextual. It can be on a personal level and/or something bigger than yourself.
The problem can be; family financial needs, climate change, education, one’s health issue, nation’s economic downturn, family stability and safety, character & integrity crisis, spirituality & religion, politics, children development, mental health, transportation issues, technology & innovation, human rights, justice and so on and so forth.
Lesson no.1: only when you know what problems you want to take part in, can you find meaning in your career.
Lesson no.2: when it starts from a problem, career is NOT limited to profession and job title. Unlike a profession, career does not end in retirement — I can be a 70 years old grandma but still work on my career.
Lesson no.3: when it starts from a problem, it becomes easier to articulate your career mission. Here’s mine:
- To leverage the power of humility for productivity, successes, and joy in life.
- To effectively validate and scale profitable businesses that solve important problems.
Just like a company mission, your mission takes the role as a guiding principle to make any career decisions or even life decisions.
I won’t be such a utopia to hope that everyone on this planet can be driven by problems, but if more people can be genuine about the problems they want to solve — I believe we can live in a much better world.
“Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up but what problems they want to solve. This changes the conversation from who do I want to work for, to what do I need to learn to be able to do that.” — Jaime Casap, Former Chief Education Evangelist at Google
If you don’t know what problem you want to be part of, take your time. You are not alone, I am also in the process to figure it out :)
