Work Trajectories | #160
An Invitation
This week’s entry was written more in the style of a reflective diary entry, going over the three ‘mini-careers’ I have had thus far, in my working life. Writing this piece helped me to understand and contextualise the role which work has played in my life and helped me to plan for the future — maybe it will do the same for you!
Gentle Reader,
I love reading about the evolution of the working lives of others. Tracing somebody's progression across different industries, in particular, has always been a point of interest for me.
Behind every worker, every careerist, every company man and freelancer, there is an individual. The individual who changes radically from one field to another, or from one trade to another is, in a sense, repudiating a past version of themselves.
They are making a statement which says: this is not who I am, or: this role did not nourish or sustain me.
My working life (so far) has had three distinct chapters: clinical medicine, academia, and industry/corporate. In reality, the distinction is a little less clear cut, but the overall evolution took that shape.
Let's look at these three different movements in my life, at how did they did or did not serve me in the past, and why I moved on to pastures new.
Clinical Medicine
I studied medicine almost by default. My burning passion in school was English , followed by European languages, but the prevailing opinion at the time of my final exams was that if you were smart enough to “get the points” for medicine, you should do it, since a lifetime of job security, wealth, and prestige would inevitably ensue.
Plus, since medicine is done straight out of "high school" here, and since there are no large fees for undergraduates here, the decision to study medicine was not seen as a financial burden or as something that had to be made to pay out, even if high earnings were generally expected.
A lot of my friends studied medicine, on this basis too. Looking back, I would say about 60% of my colleagues studied medicine out of this vague sense of obligation, while not really being into it.
Another 25-35% were probably moderately good fit for the career, without actually being true devotees to the cause. A final 10% were probably really interested in medicine for the right reasons.
What interests me most is that group of 60% who went into it for the sake of it. Out of this category, I would say that 90% of them still don't really understand the forces that propelled them, and many are operating at a psychological loss, whilst still hanging in there due to a sunk cost fallacy.
Why did I move away from clinical medicine?
There were multiple reasons. I was not aligned with the work. I had never really envisaged being a doctor until I neared the end of my studies. I didn't have a deep interest, and the parts which did interest me were always more scientific than pragmatic. Even as a kid, I always knew it wasn't for me, and so I had one eye on the exit, before I even started.
In terms of lifestyle, even though I had gotten past the stage of night shifts and weekends, I still would very occasionally have to hold the emergency phone and stay late in case something happened. This made me miss out sometimes on some of the simple things in the evenings, like language classes, sports, which I have come to enjoy so much. No thanks.
I'm glad I worked as a clinical doctor. It granted me lots of useful skills and the ability to help people, and to learn about the human body in a way which can never be taught by reading textbooks.
I also got a stable income from it, which allowed me to get on the property ladder (no mean feat – more on that soon).
But there came a point of diminishing returns. As I developed as a doctor, the other parts of me began to wither. My friends in corporate were learning how to navigate meetings and work relationships, how to speak, present information and how to plan prove their worth in the organisation. My friends in business were striking deals and some other friends were starting their own businesses or joining start-ups.
I am, and was, totally pragmatic about the limits of these experiences, too. I knew that they sucked in a different way, but I wanted something new, as I had an run out of road, and wasn’t learning any more in clinical medicine, I was ready to move on.
Academia
When the opportunity to work as a tutor and researcher in a university came up, I was happy to take it. Working in academia was a new departure, even if I wasn't changing fields as such.
I was using my medical knowledge to write research and to teach medical students. A different part of my brain lit up — it was very gratifying seeing medical students finally understand a topic for the first time, or being able to take the time to craft a succinct abstract for a research paper. There was also a good buzz being around a university campus and it was nice to feed off the energy of the students.
There was also a dark side to academia. Due to publication bias, research which does not come with a finding or seem novel, often wouldn't be published, even though the information within was still valuable and contributing to the scientific yield.
The other pain point was the tedious nature of academia itself. We received funding from various institutions and so, in order to explain to them what we were doing with the money, we had to make regular presentations. This makes sense of course, but it wasn't really feasible to explain to the delegates the nuances of the work, and the delegates themselves were usually dead-behind-the-eyes bodies who had been sent as part of a box-ticking exercises.
There was also the infamous problem of citing your friends and getting cited in return.
All-in-all, it was too boring. As ungracious as it sounds, I just was not interested in examining students, in grading their papers, even if I liked the hands on teaching part. And the level of boredom associated with that paled in comparison to inter-departmental meetings...
I did learn from it, however, and I ended up being able to put some research on my CV, resend which helped need me to eventually transition to industry/ corporate.
Industry/Corporate
The third chapter of my "career" involved working in what was essentially corporate private healthcare, albeit in a very innovative envrionment. I went in at a high level and I learned an awful lot.
I had to work across teams and deliver KPIs and work on strategy and all of that stuff, which can be a bit of a drag. But there was also lot of interesting development and problem-solving. I basically had to explain every decision and either greenlight or stop projects in their tracks
On a personal & professional level, the learning rate was tantamount to drinking from a fire hose. There was also quite a lot of stress & responsibility, and I was present in some wild meetings where tempers flared and where things essentially devolved into shouting matches. Wild.
Underneath the surface, there was always a kind of soullessness, and a detachment from the work which had become very abstracted. In the end, I was happy to witness first hand the perks of corporate work while also understanding the limits, especially in regard to the particular role I was in. The learning slowed down and I pulled back a bit, remaining involved but not on a day-to-day basis.
Chapter 4 ???
Reading this back, it all comes out quite negative, maybe even idealistic. I still enjoyed and loved all those jobs, in their own way. But I think it’s good to keep moving, and you can feel it in your bones when it’s time to hit the dusty trail again.
What is next? I have no idea what will happen, even if I have a rough idea of what I want, pragmatically speaking.
The thing I really love is reading and writing — since I was a kid I always loved the act of taking notes, of scaffolding words, of having a pen in hand.
I know full well this can't pay the bills, or even begin to. But I'm also fortunate I have the opportunity to live in an era of almost limitless online reach, which means my words can arrive in your cerebral cortext seconds after I hit ‘Publish.’
These words can entertain and inform others and, just as writing them helped me to digest my past and plan my future, they might be of help to those out there who want to make plans of their own, or who feel compelled to share their own career pathways in the comments.
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Affiliates:
My friend Paul Millerd runs the Pathless Path Community, a cozy online space where we support each other to find ways to live and work in the most authentic way possible.
I also recommend the Supernote e-ink device, which I use for reading, writing, and annotating documents. This affiliate link is only valid for EU customers. This article was actually written with Supernote, and then converted to text within the device, before exporting to a word document
