How to avoid burnout and chart a career you love

Mapping a Career is hard. Often people make decisions based on the next opportunity in front of them, and end up burning out or feeling unfulfilled and unhappy after a 30 year career.

Every person is different and every career needs to be charted differently. There is no one whose priorities, values, or talents are exactly like yours so charting your own fulfilling career is a very individual endeavor. One thing I know for sure is that the path to unhappiness and burnout is climbing someone else’s ladder. I see this happen in many friends and colleagues. The path to fulfillment is defining your own vision of success and following that.

How do you do this? First, we will stack-rank the following 6 F's based on your own internal make-up and values.?

Imagine you are on your deathbed after a long career. You look back on your life, and reflect on the decisions you made about the work you did and accomplished. You remember all the jobs you took, all the organizations you worked for, and all the people you worked with. You would be happy if your career gave you the following things in order of importance to you. Read this list and then stack-rank them in order of importance to you and only you...

Finances?

You made a lot of money which afforded you a lifestyle with nice things. Your career choices gave you a beautiful house, a fancy car, and all the luxuries you wanted.

Fame

You made a name for yourself, and people look up to you. You had high status at work and that meant you were invited to events and revered publicly for your expertise. You can rest assured that hundreds or thousands of people will mourn you and remember you, and many people will write about the exceptional life you lived.?

Family

You made time to prioritize family. You rarely skipped a school event and showed up to activities that were important to your kids. You were there for your parents as well, and when you took family vacations, you tried to make sure you were truly off the clock.?

Fit?

Everything you did in your life fit with your ethics and morals. You felt that you never had to compromise your moral compass or do anything you thought was unethical in order to do your job, keep your job, or be successful.?

Fun?

You woke up every weekday morning looking forward to the day ahead. You knew you would feel energy and joy during the workday, doing what you needed to do to accomplish your goals. You felt in your life that you never “worked,” instead every day felt like play.

Freedom

You felt a great sense of freedom in your career. You didn’t feel like you were trapped in a job, or scared that you needed to keep a job you didn’t like. You never felt like anyone?else’s slave at work, and retained a feeling of internal freedom in every work interaction.?

What's next

Make sure you stack rank these so that you feel the list accurately reflects what is important to you, and only you. (Not your parents, your spouse, or anyone else). Now look at the list.?

Is #1 really more important that #2? Is #2 really more important than #3? If not, then change the order until you have an order that feels really, really good and “Right” to you.?

Now draw a line after the first 3 items. Imagine that you had a career that only gave you the first 3 and not the lower 3. Does this give you an inner sense of contentment? Or is there an item in the last 3 that you really cannot let go of? If there is an item in the bottom 3 that you cannot let go of, move it up to the top 3 and drop another item into the bottom 3.?

When you have a List of the 3F’s that would bring you true contentment if your career would give you these things, then you have the North Star for how to make decisions about your Career. This does not mean that you can’t get the other 3 F’s lower on the list or take a job for a short period of time that optimizes for one of the other 3 F’s, just that you should not make major career decisions or stay in a job for a long period of time based on the bottom F’s.?

I would like to hear your experience doing this exercise, and if this framework is useful to you. I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many executives and product managers are burned out, and I believe it’s because they are pursuing some idea of a “career path” or “career ladder” that was written by someone else, based on values different than their own. No matter how successful you look, that success will not lead to happiness if it does not come from your own internal compass and who you authentically are.

Many thanks to Adam Bosworth for telling me about this framework, and to amazing friends and work colleagues Merline Saintil Shannon Nash, Esq., CPA Leslie Witt Tiffany Chin Kate Lydon Eric Lopez Eric Boduch Trisha Price Rahul Jain Dustin Amrhein Melinda Gonzalez Melissa Mazman Nancy Wang Roxy Kellogg and many, many others who make my career exceptionally FUN and fulfilling!