What I really want to talk about involves a much bigger
version of the question “why am I here and not elsewhere?” I want to talk about the process of thinking
through why I’m in this career and not a different one. I’ll admit that this was in part precipitated
by our move, as making such a large decision involves some deep thinking about
what you really value and what you want from your career. But, this also came about as our group dove
into the topic of motivation for our group retreat last summer.
My main hobbies are all athletic, so I was intrigued by an
article I saw last year written by a personal trainer. They described the first conversation they
have with potential clients who are thinking of signing up for coaching, and
how they ask the seemingly simple question of “why do you want to do
this?” The author described how nearly
all people answer in one of two categories: (1) I want to lose weight/feel more
attractive, or (2) I want to be healthier.
We might be tempted to consider answer 1 to be incorrect and answer 2 to
be correct. But, that’s not the case –
turns out neither is a good answer, as the real reason is usually much more
specific, and finding that real answer is the key to their client finding the
motivation to get out of bed before dawn and do hard workouts week after
week. The author then went on to
describe how they probe with questions until they get to that real answer,
which is often along the lines of “My dad had a heart attack at age 42 and I’m
about to turn 40. I don’t want my kids
to go through the pain and worry that I did.” or “I know that the reason I’m
still single is because I don’t have enough confidence to meet new people. If I start working out, that will give me the
confidence I need.”
We can apply this very same process to asking ourselves why
we’ve chosen the career that we did, and similarly, can then use this answer to
maintain our motivation through the tough days.
The answer to this question can also be very powerful in guiding future
career choices – once you know what you really love about your current job, you
can look at the options and ask “will this new opportunity give me more or less
of that?”
So, how do you find this answer? Similar to the personal coaching example, you
have to keep asking questions. If you ask me why I love what I do, my gut
reaction is to say “because I love science.”
That’s not incorrect, but it’s the equivalent of saying “I want to
exercise to be healthier.” There are
tons of jobs that involve science, and just “loving science” probably won’t get
me out of bed in the morning and motivate me to work at my top capacity. When I pushed further, I came up with “I love
the autonomy and creativity of academic research.” That’s a bit better, but still isn’t specific
enough to explain the career choices I’ve made (and why I’m spending an hour
writing a blog post instead of working on a grant application!). Pushed further, I will say “I thrive on
building relationships.” This is yet
another step closer, as it gets to a specific part of my job that really drives
me, but again, there are a lot of jobs that involve science, independent
research, and building relationships. My
final answer (for now) is “I love working with an ever evolving group of
energetic, driven, and creative students and postdocs, getting to see them grow
their knowledge and independence during their time in our group, and having the
privilege of being a part of their life as they move on and navigate their own
future career.” Now that is getting somewhere!
Now that I have this answer, what do I do with it? Going back again to the personal coaching
example, there are days when motivation is high and others when it is low. Knowing why you love your job is something
you can leverage powerfully to get you through those tougher days or less
pleasant tasks. For example, one of the things that needed to be done for our
move was reviewing quotes for small pieces of lab equipment. As enthralling as it is to stare at two pdfs
each having a hundred line items, and try to figure out which vendor will give
us a better deal on refrigerators, pipettors, heating blocks, etc, this is just
not fun for me. But, knowing what
motivates me, I could frame it as “I need to get this done because the people
on our research team are counting on me to get our orders in on time and to
choose options that will best suit our research.” It really helped!
This technique can also apply to much bigger decisions. If you are a grad student or postdoc thinking about your future career, ask yourself what you love about your current job and what you don’t love. Dive deep to find the question of what really motivates you. Enlist a close friend or mentor to push you until you find a good answer. If people know you well, then when you do hit that answer, they’ll say “yup, that totally makes sense.” Then, as you survey the landscape of career options before you, think about the extent to which each one will provide you with opportunities that tap into the source of your motivation.
An important caveat in all of this is that there’s many ways
to be very successful in a given career.
I can almost guarantee that my answer to why I love my job is not the
most common one you would get from faculty.
I would guess it’s more common for faculty to arrive at something along
the lines of “I love the rush of sifting through data to learn something new
about how the world works, and realizing that we were the first people to ever
have that knowledge.” That's a great
reason to go into academia! Having a different motivational structure means
that you might tackle a job in slightly different ways, but doesn’t necessarily
determine your success in a given career.
Rather, knowing your real source of motivation can guide you to the
place where you’re most likely to find fulfillment, and will give you the best
shot at success by helping you to give your best on both fun and not fun tasks,
and to drive hard through all of the ups and downs.
