I was talking to a friend who recently left his job. He’s been exploring many things on his time off, but he’s felt the nagging discomfort of working on the “wrong thing” – that he should be focusing on depth rather than breadth.
His mental model for depth vs breadth looked like this:
Put another way, it’s like he was a video game character who was forced to pick a specialization on a skill tree. He felt he could only focus on one thing at the expense of all the other branches.
But during the conversation, I countered that his interests and skills were shaped more like this:
His skills and interests weren’t disparate entities, floating about in isolation.
They were likely related to each other in one way or another. At the very least, they had one common denominator: him!
If he followed his instinct on what energized him, his interests would naturally build on one another. Each skill would build momentum on top of the next until he had a magnificent flywheel of experiences!
The map is not the territory!
Once you’re off the traditional career path, there’s an instinct to grasp onto legibility amidst the otherwise unstructured uncertainty. It feels safer to find the next title you can slot yourself into.
Letting your interests flywheel leads to unexpected, illegible career paths. Let’s take a look at the McElroy family for example:
We set the stage with the three McElroy brothers: Travis works as a director for the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Justin and Griffin work as journalist and video producers.
They build off their sibling chemistry, theatrical flair, and editing experience to start a comedy podcast together called My Brother, My Brother and Me
It consistently ranks as a top comedy podcast on iTunes and is adapted into a show with guest stars like Weird Al and Lin-Manuel Miranda
The brothers build off the MBMBAM magic and throw tabletop role-playing games into the mix with a separate fantasy RPG podcast called The Adventure Zone
Their father Clint is also involved as a character, and his former career is in radio broadcast – coincidentally, he’s got a golden voice for podcasts!
The worldbuilding and lore of The Adventure Zone has led to graphic novel adaptations and an animated series currently in pre-production
Try finding a how-to book on building a career like that!
Your career isn’t a static skill tree. It’s a dynamic system, one that breathes and grows as much as you let it.
So spin your wheel!