From Overwhelmed to Empowered: The Science of Making Great Career Decisions

“If you don’t know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favorable.” - Seneca

Choice is one of the trickiest parts of any decision-making process. As discussed by Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice, the more choice we have, the more challenging the process, and the higher the likelihood we will not be happy with our ultimate decision. For me, this means that the most essential part of making a decision, aside from the final decision itself, is narrowing down our options to choose from. So today, let us talk about making a decision.

The Vast Sea of Possibility

You are likely reading this post because you currently face a major choice in your life. Maybe it is deciding on your career path or which college to attend. Maybe it is whether to leave your job and pursue something new. No matter the decision you face, big or small, the outcome will affect your future, sometimes in unforeseen and significant ways. What makes this decision harder is often the amount of choice we have.

For the remainder of this post, I will talk in terms of career decision making, but this can apply to any life-altering decision you need to make.

The truth is, the more options we have, the harder it is to process that information and land on a decision. Then, even if we think we have made a decision, we are faced with the stress of wondering if we made the right decision. For example, when considering a career path, you may sink four or five years of your life into college and another two to four into the actual career, only to find out you do not enjoy what you ended up in. This stress of what may come is unavoidable. Anxiety over the future is a core feature of our genes. This anxiety is one of the core reasons why the human species has achieved so much - our ability to contemplate outcomes in the future.

Add to this the overwhelming number of choices we have. Compared to the past, a current high school student has an overwhelming number of options to choose from. Simply diving into the number of careers available can be overwhelming. The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) lists over 1000 occupations on their site. The site is helpful but quite overwhelming. And most of the occupations listed are quite broad. For example, O*NET puts all secondary school teachers (middle and high school) under one occupational listing. This occupation includes everything - math, social studies, English, foreign language, physical education, band, choir, orchestra, theater, visual art, technology, etc. While all of these are teaching occupations, a quick conversation reveals the vast difference between teaching band and Algebra I. Or the gulf of skills necessary between teaching sixth graders and high school seniors.

Even if we narrow down a general occupation, narrowing down colleges can be just as overwhelming. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 3,982 postsecondary institutions in the United States in the 2019-20 school year. And then we have the number of degrees that a college may offer. The University of Colorado Boulder alone has nine separate colleges, over 90 degree programs, and more than 3,600 courses to choose from. And any of these degree programs can lead in any number of directions.

And even if you have all of this set up in front of you, the next question is, who should you work for? If you end up with one of any number of engineering degrees, what company will you give your talents to? Where do you want to live? How much does it pay? What are the benefits? What are the work hours? There are so many factors to take in.

The Biological Challenges of Career Decision Making

This process is made more complex by our minds. Our brain is an amazing organ, but it has limitations that we must contend with. When it comes to decision-making, the brain uses shortcuts we are often unaware of. The brain considers the current situation, compares it to past experience and knowledge (whether correct or not), and spits out a decision for us. Sometimes, an experience we barely remember from an untrustworthy source shapes our decisions. A simple generalization by an ignorant peer in middle school could shape our thoughts about a career for our entire lives.

In addition, the brain has a limited ability to process factors. There is a reason phone numbers are essentially seven digits long. Anything after seven factors, we begin to be overwhelmed, and our brain makes worse decisions. Think for just a moment about the number of factors that go into deciding on a career. The paths and aspects to decide on begin to spiral out of control. But if we try to limit the number of factors, for example, by basing our decision only on earning potential, we set ourselves up for future frustration as we head down a path we did not fully explore.

And the more factors we consider, the more brain power it takes to arrive at a decision. The more options we have, the more effort it takes to make a decision, and the more likely we are to make the wrong decision. This situation is where the phrase disabled by choice comes from. If we have too many options, we may freeze and make no choice or a poor choice because our brains can not handle the challenge.

And here is where it gets frustrating. If we make a poor choice based on unconscious biases because our brain is overwhelmed, our brain will convince us that it was a good choice. It will reverse engineer a reason for why it was a good decision, even if we disagree with the reasoning. Also, consider the idea of the sunk-cost fallacy. This phenomenon is where a person will dig their feet in on a decision because they have invested heavily in it (in the case of decision-making with their time and energy), even when it is clear that a different course would be more beneficial.

A Side Note On Routines

This biological aspect of the brain is why routines are a great habit to develop. A healthy routine is a shortcut for your brain. When we do not have to decide what to eat for breakfast, where to get gas, or what to do during our work time because we have a routine in place, it frees the brain to conserve energy to make more challenging decisions later. Again, these are healthy, well-thought-out routines. The initial setup can be difficult, but the long-range benefits are innumerable.

The Importance of Choice

Even simply writing this post has me feeling overwhelmed, and I do not have a major choice to make! It may make us feel like we should throw up our hands and roll the dice on a career decision and hope for the best. However, we still need to make an informed choice. I like to do a thought experiment to demonstrate that, while the task of decision-making is great, our future happiness depends on it.

For a moment, let us think about the future you and the time they have available. A week is 168 hours long for everyone. In a typical week, you will spend your time similar to the following breakdown:

• 40 hours working

• 56 hours sleeping (already we are down more than half of our week)

• 10 hours getting ready for and traveling to work

• 2 hours taking care of yourself...minimum

• 6 hours on chores...minimum

Altogether, this leaves you with 50 hours a week for you to use as you wish. That sounds like a nice amount of time. However, on a typical workday, you will be left with three hours for yourself (usually tired after working). Most people spend their weekends running around doing family activities and trying to rest to prepare for the following work week. In the end, what seems like a lot of time for yourself disappears quickly. Over 70% of your time belongs to activities other than focusing on you. This is why your career decision matters!

A Fulfilling Career

I believe that everyone needs to have a fulfilling career because we have so little time available to us. Having a career that leaves us content and fulfilled frees us to live a life we love. I have already written a post talking about this in my discussion about using the Japanese philosophy of ikigai to help make this choice. I encourage you to go back and read that post. To summarize that post, the better aligned your life is with your career, the less you will have to rely on your free time to make up for what you need. So, even though the weight of making this decision is hard, it is necessary to live our best lives.

So What Can I Do? How Do I Make A Great Career Decision?

As the opening quote from Seneca implies, there is no good fortune when you do not know where you are going. Making good decisions starts with knowing where you want to go, which relies on knowing yourself. Understanding your personality, your passions, and what fills you with a sense of purpose is built on understanding your values, self-reflection, and experience. I talk more about this in my post on using a career-decision model. What you need to understand, though, is that this takes time - we can not rush this process. And, as Robert Greene talks about in his book Mastery, you need a mentor to guide you through this process. Have others gone through this process without a mentor? Yes. However, not utilizing a mentor makes the journey longer, more difficult, and more confusing.

Final Thoughts

Big decisions are overwhelming. I thought about writing "can be overwhelming," but there is no "can" in this situation. Big decisions are overwhelming. And that is okay. My goal with this post was not to scare you from these decisions but to shed light on the process. Decisions are hard for everyone, and this post serves to show why. It also reveals that there is a path forward to help you make those decisions. And, if you need it, here is your permission to ask for help from others in making your decisions.

There is a lot at stake. I want you to live a great life. And I would love to help you make the best decision you can. If you are interested in working with me, reach out and ask. I am ready, and I want to help you. I think the best way is to end this post with two quotes.

"The struggle is great, the task divine—to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility." - Epictetus

“Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?” - Marcus Aurelius

Ready to learn how you can use insight into your personality and values to improve your life? Reach out today, and we will get started moving you from overwhelm and uncertainty to clarity and direction.

With love,

Tom Chapman, TruePath Discovery Coaching