One of the things that gets in the way of our moving full-heartedly to another job or career is our own lack of imagination. We just can’t imagine what else we could do.

Part of it stems from the likelihood that we’re surrounded by other academics, who also have no idea what else they might do.

Part of it stems from patterns many families have about what kinds of work you do. (Mine is all accountants and engineers and medical professionals. And me.)

And part of it stems from primarily knowing about non-academic jobs from the point of view of the consumer.

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker

As consumers, we interact with a broad cross-section of jobs: sales people, nurses, doctors, lawyers, therapists, social workers, teachers, bus drivers, traffic officers. So when we’re thinking about what else we could do, our minds tend to turn towards these.

We never think about – because we might not even know about – all the other jobs that have nothing to do with consumers directly.

Project management. Marketing. Scrum master. Human resources. Product buyer. Business strategist. Fundraiser. Program designer. Corporate trainer. Doggie daycare owner. Backpack designer. Gear tester. Forensic accountant. Golf course manager. Hospital ethics committee. Consultant. And thousands of others you may never have even heard of.

You want to think more broadly

Most of the jobs we think of easily require more schooling – much more schooling – before we could even begin to move into them. The rest of them don’t require a degree, but also probably don’t feel like careers. (They may be great careers if you love that work, actually, but we don’t assume they can be careers.)

At this point, more schooling might sound comforting and familiar, but let’s face it. At some point, we all have to leave school. Why not now?

Most of the jobs in the for-profit and non-profit world don’t necessarily need a particular degree to get you in the door. Relevant experience, yes, but you can get that any number of ways.

That means your options are a lot broader when you’re looking outside of the narrow band of professions that need a graduate degree. And it means that, right now, just as you are, you’ve got a lot of possibilities.

Go out and find them

Talk to people. Ask what they do. Ask what happens at the company or the organization they work for. Ask what kind of jobs exist there. Ask what their friends do.

Look up companies that sound interesting. Read their websites. See if you can find a list of staff or departments. Extrapolate.

Browse the Occupational Outlook Handbook to immerse yourself in the full range of what’s out there. Notice what makes you sit up and take notice. Notice what makes you get a little bit more excited.

Doing this kind of work is crucial to finding the Next Right Step in your life and career. It’s why Jo Van Every and I teach our Choosing Your Career Consciously course.

But we also teach it because we know just how brilliant, inventive, and curious academics are. We know just how valuable those skills are outside of academia, and we know that the world needs your particular perspective and smarts.

So if you need the support of a community as you work through finding that Next Right Step, consider joining our next round, starting October 6.

The Monday Roundup hasn’t gone away, but I’m going to do it monthly rather than weekly. Catch it on October 3^rd!

As much as I believe in the power of a calling, in the idea that for each of us there is work that makes us sing, sometimes the idea of a calling can paralyze us.

How do I know this is really my calling? Maybe it’s just a passing whim. Can it possibly be important enough or meaningful enough or whatever to be a calling? I have no idea what my calling is and so I must stay here in misery until I do.

We humans, we’re so good at using our big, powerful brains to confuse the hell out of ourselves.

Sometimes we have to jump.

You probably don’t know this, but my own process of leaving academia looked something like this.

• Spend two years in a tenure-track job confused and miserable.
• Realize I want out.
• Spend two years miserable and convinced I can’t do anything else.
• Have a series of Big Ideas that go nowhere after teensy-tiny setbacks. (Oh, copyediting, I think I’m glad you and I never got together.)
• Take a deep breath and send out a couple of applications.
• Six weeks later, start a new job in a new city.

Sometimes I talk about that last bullet to make the point that you never know what will happen when you start applying, no matter what the averages or the medians or other people’s experiences are. Serendipity happens. I got crazy lucky.

But today I want to talk about a different aspect of those six weeks.

Six weeks took four years

It’s easy to look at the six weeks between when I sent in my applications and when I started a new job and think, holy hell, that was really short!

And in terms of packing up a household of two adults, two dogs, and two cats, finding new lodgings, putting a house on the market, resigning one job (and career!) and starting another, yes. Yes it was. It was so short as to be just this side of insane. (I really don’t recommend it.)

But that six weeks was a product of years of thinking. And dithering. And doubting. And wandering. And wondering. And hoping.

I brought all of that with me when I took the plunge to send in applications, and I brought all of that with me when I actually accepted that job and walked into my chair’s office to resign.

But if I hadn’t, finally, jumped, those four years would simply have been misery. They were something else because I held my breath and did something terrifying.

It worked

I learned a lot in that first job out of academia. One of the things I learned was that I don’t actually like being a fundraiser, but it was a reasonable hypothesis to start with. I jumped out of academia, and I spent three years learning all kinds of things before needing to jump again.

Only this time it was easier. I already knew I could switch fields and not die. I already knew I brought a whole host of skills and talents to the workplace. I already knew I could make it outside of the ivory tower.

But I didn’t know any of that until I jumped. And I wouldn’t have learned any of it if I hadn’t jumped.

In which I quote Finding Nemo

There’s a scene near the end of the movie Finding Nemo wherein Dory the amnesiac and Martin the panicking parent are in the mouth of a whale. They’re hanging on to some part of its tongue, and it’s telling them to let go. Martin yells to Dory, “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?”

She says, simply, “I don’t.” He lets go, and the whale shoots them out of its blowhole into Sydney Harbor – exactly where they wanted to go.

Sometimes, we need to have faith that our lives will unfold in beautiful and interesting and compelling ways, and that we can’t actually control this. Sometimes we need to actually jump into the unfamiliar possibility in order to get the next layer of understanding that gets us closer to our calling.

Sometimes the best way to find our calling is to try things.

So go ahead. Jump.

Take a leap into the unknown and trust that whatever happens next, you will be enough to deal with it and learn from and it and be that much closer to knowing what you actually do want.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find out that this new thing you doubted, it really is what you should be doing.

(And I’m really sorry if I put the Pointer Sisters in your head….)

Not sure how to jump? I’m teaching a free class on August 1 that covers common misunderstandings about academics we have to deal with, strategies for translating your skills into non-academic settings, and a 6-part system for finding a job you love. You can learn more and sign up here.

A few months ago, I was sitting in a breakout group of all the managers at my dayjob. We were talking about how to motivate people and how to keep people challenged, when one of my colleagues said something so wrong-headed I almost couldn’t contain myself.

“By definition, work isn’t fun,” he said. “That’s why we have to pay people to do it. If it were fun, people would do it for free.”

This is a common assumption or belief about work, but I don’t believe it for a second.

Where that goes wrong

If that sentiment were true, jobs that were more fun would be paid less, and jobs that were less fun would be paid more.

Last time I checked, jobs like cleaning bathrooms, digging rocks, or picking fruit in the hot sun are paid pretty miserably. Subsistence wages, if that.

While we’ve all got our list of jobs that would be incredibly fun, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that everything on your list probably gets paid more than janitorial wages.

And while there are exceptions to this very general rule (lots of creative jobs, like dance, pay extraordinarily poorly in the traditional venues), it’s instructive nonetheless.

What really happens

When we do work for a person or for an organization, we get paid because we are creating value. We are accomplishing something, making something possible that wouldn’t be possible without our labor.

A teacher gets paid (okay, usually not well) for designing a class and supporting students in learning the material. Without that teacher, those people do not learn.

An accountant gets paid to make sure all the money that goes into or out of any unit (an organization, a family) is accounted for so that the people in that unit can make informed choices about how they earn and spend money.

A choreographer gets paid to design new and illuminating dance routines to please the senses and the intellect. Without that work, our world would be poorer.

All of the work we do adds value to the world, either by enabling someone to do something they couldn’t have done otherwise, or by actually bringing new things into the world. This is a good thing.

And we dedicate a significant chunk of our time to creating that value because that enables us to do things like eat and pay rent and pursue the things we want – which creates value in our lives.

These are not opposed

Our whole culture is organized around this idea that we’ll spend 30-40 years working our tails off, often miserably, in order to retire early and enjoy our golden years. It’s like retirement is the carrot held out instead of the stick of debtor’s prison, and we wouldn’t work if we didn’t have one or the other pushing us forward.

And let’s be honest: There are plenty of people who are miserable in their jobs, because they’re doing work they don’t like, for people who aren’t very nice. But that’s not “the way things should be.” That’s a tragedy.

In fact, retirement, far from being the golden experience you see in the brochures, is often hugely stressful to people, because they got meaning and joy from their work and aren’t sure what to do with themselves now.

When we’re doing work we love and we’re good at, we’re creating value for ourselves, and we’re creating value for the world. At the same time. Right now.

Yes, there are tradeoffs

It’s true that we will sometimes be willing to take a lower salary in return for a job we really love. But that lower salary will likely still be above the line of what you need to support yourself and your family.

And it’s true that we could all use more time off than we usually get, which leads us to dreaming of job-free lives. But for most of us, lolling around the beach in a hammock would get old soon enough.

In other words, we don’t get paid because work is odious. We get paid because we are providing something of value to someone else.

So why does this matter?

It matters because, so long as work is defined as “no fun,” it’s hard to take seriously what we really, passionately want to do – because we assume it can’t make any money.

It matters because such an assumption makes us hesitate to charge money for our skills and talents, because they’re too fun to be worth much.

It matters because it makes thinking about work and careers depressing, instead of exciting.

It matters because it helps us settle for less than we’re worth, doing work that is less than we’re capable of.

The other day at the library, I picked up a book called The Right Words at the Right Time. It’s small essay after small essay by famous people about the words that changed their lives. I found most of them unmoving (sometimes you have to be the person in question for the words to land right), but then I came across Diane Sawyer’s piece.

She’s describing a time when she was young and aimless, and her father asked her three questions: “What is it you love? Where is the most adventurous place you could do it? And are you certain it will serve other people?”

They’re a pretty good framework for thinking about your calling.

What is it you love?

We’ve talked about this one a lot, but it really is central. Doing what you love gives you energy, it doesn’t take it. Doing what you love gives you the impetus to work and grow and learn, because it isn’t a chore.

The biggest misconception I see with “do what you love” is the tendency to associate “what you love” with a job instead of with activities. We love talking to people. We love solving problems. We love organizing things. We love helping people who have been through shit come out the other side. We love teaching. We may love a job that incorporates all the right elements, but while the job may not be transferrable, the elements always are.

Where is the most adventurous place you could do it?

We have a tendency to think small. It’s easier to think about careers in the usual way.

But what if you could join the activities and skills that light you up with a context that blows you away? What feels adventurous to you?

For some people, adventure is about travel. They’ll teach English in a foreign country, sign on to an NGO, or hightail it to Thailand because you can live there for cheap while telecommuting to a company that pays a standard US salary.

But for some people, adventure is going to be rethinking their family arrangement to have each adult work half-time so both people get to spend lots of time with the toddler. For some people, adventure is going to be picking up and moving to the place you always wanted to live, because now you can.

One of the advantages of the mostly-crappy experience of coming to a crossroads is that everything is up for grabs. If you’re going to move anyway, why not move exactly where you’d like to? If you’re going to change careers anyway, why not explore the thing you’ve always secretly wanted to?

Are you certain it will serve other people?

It’s easy to reduce “serve other people” to Doctors Without Borders or the Peace Corps or teaching. But it’s so much more than that.

The person who writes young adult novels that help teens get a grip on their lives? Serving other people.

The person who designs beautiful furniture that doesn’t cost a first-born? Serving other people.

The person who designs surreal puppet shows that expand people’s minds? Serving other people.

The real question is, how is this serving other people? It’s about articulating to yourself how this betters the world, because connection work you love with the world gives it just a little more gravity.

Three questions

So how would you answer these three questions?

Finding a job is one thing — and an important thing, to be sure. But unless we spend the time and energy to figure out what we really want to be doing, we’re going to land right back where we are now: frustrated, restless, lost, and unhappy. This is where we talk about how we can uncover the things we most want to do with our lives. It’s also where I test out tools so you don’t have to. Click here for past posts.

Let me tell you a brief story

There are lots of reasons I left academia. But one I don’t talk about as much is this: I was bored out of my everloving mind.

Sure, I could turn my dissertation into a manuscript. I was told that after you leave it alone for a while, it becomes interesting again. Um, fail.

Sure, I could research something sort of related but sort of different – it’s taking something in a new direction! Fail.

Sure, I could throw myself into my teaching. Fail, fail, fail.

And I can’t tell you that departmental politics, committee meetings, or advising were altogether diverting.

It really wasn’t them. It was me.

It wasn’t that my situation was unusual. Turning your dissertation into a book? Normal. Taking your research in a new direction? Normal. Engaging teaching as an intellectually rich endeavor (because it is)? Normal.

I, however, was apparently not normal.

And I suspect that many of you may be more like me than like my graduate student friends who are happily tenured and writing and teaching.

I see it again and again

Many of my clients – you could even say most of my clients – have something in common besides academia. They love learning for the sake of learning. Left to their own devices (and with sufficient money to make it happen), they’d probably just keep taking class after class, just because.

It’s how we all landed in academia in the first place. Where else does someone who loves learning go but on to more schooling?

The problem with that, of course, schooling has an end-point, and with that end-point comes the presumption that all of your schooling has been aimed at a career.

But what if it wasn’t?

Many of us went to graduate school because we loved the idea of being a professor. Few of us really knew what that meant, though. Sure, we knew professors taught students, but most of the rest of their job – advising, serving on committees, participating in shared governance, publishing or perishing – was invisible to us.

What we thought they did, in addition to all of that teaching, was read. Think. Learn. Of course those of us who love to learn things would think it was a great idea.

Breadth vs. depth

But one of the realities of academia is that you are, to a large extent, limited in what you can dive into. Jobs are disciplinary. Contracts are disciplinary. Teaching is disciplinary.

My friends who love academia look at me a little strangely, because they did go on to learn other things. The difference was that they looked at a different 19^th century educator, or dipped in to Burke, or wrote about bodies in the same era of rhetoric they’d been writing me.

Me, I wanted to go learn about geography. (There is such a thing as cultural geography! Feminist geography! How cool is that?) I wanted to learn color theory. I wanted to learn whale speech. I wanted to learn psychology.

English is an admittedly baggy field, but it wasn’t baggy enough for me. And my department and my teaching requirements were definitely not baggy enough for me.

If I had paid any attention to my own patterns, I would have been able to predict this. See, my particular strength is not depth, it’s breadth. I know lots and lots about many different things, things that don’t, on first glance, seem to go together.

I’m what Barbara Sher calls a scanner. And many of the people I talk to who are unhappy with academia are scanners too.

Scanners are the Renaissance people of our times

There are lots of types of scanners, scanners who return to the same four beloved but disparate topics, scanners who are always finding new projects, scanners who love to become masters at things, and scanners whose intellectual CV looks a lot like the Energizer Bunny took a run through the encyclopedia at high speed.

We’re the people who really like learning about personality types, and transition theory, and how to build houses, and how paint colors came to be discovered and invented and created, and the history of ballet, and mind/body theory, and how investigative police work happens, and how proto-humans ate. All at the same time, probably while building a bike and learning how to take photographic portraits and teaching the dog to behave.

It used to be that people like us were beloved, but in the last few decades, specialization has taken over from the fascinated generalist. And nowhere more than in academia.

Scanners and academia don’t get along

Academia is predicated on depth of knowledge. By its very structure, it’s predicated on everyone staying within the confines of the discipline.

You can see where things might get hairy for those of us who thrive on dipping our toes into new topics all the time.

Because of this mismatch, it’s easy to think we’ve failed, that there’s something wrong with us. But there’s nothing wrong with us. We don’t thrive in this environment, is all. We need a different climate in which to truly flourish – one that has our particular version of scanner-ness built in somehow.

If you love to learn and yet are finding yourself struggling in academia, chances are, nothing is wrong with you.

Want to read more about scanners? Click here to go to an affiliate link to Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose on Amazon.

If you’d like some help figuring out what else you might be able to do, Jo Van Every and I are running a 6-week course designed to help the academically inclined expand their sense of career possibility. You can learn more here.