Career Sanity Defined

Career Sanity means maximizing your career and work satisfaction while minimizing the frustrations, aggravations, and insanity that are frequently associated with work. Note that this tends to increase productivity as well.

(This is true regardless of the economy. In a downturn, as jobs become scarcer, some employers may become more demanding – but as customers become scarcer, smart employers will realize that they can’t afford the inefficiencies and lack of goodwill caused by nuttiness at work.)

It does not mean avoiding work or looking for some kind of free ride. Rather than something to be avoided, using our energies and abilities to support our lives – especially given the amazing choices available in a complex civilization – is one of our greatest gifts. Unfortunately, centuries of wrong-headed thinking have reversed things: career satisfaction is relatively rare, while frustrations related to work are the norm.

Does it have to be this way? Here’s one way to answer that: if nobody gets more satisfaction than frustration from their work, chances are there is no alternative. Since that isn’t the case – no, it doesn’t have to be this way. But achieving something other than the norm generally takes conscious effort, so if you want more satisfaction than frustration from your career you will have to work at it.

Here are some of the ways you can increase your chances of achieving Career Sanity:

1. Stay flexible. Keep obligations minimal, or at least reasonable, while figuring out what to do, where to do it, and how to get paid for it. Set your compass toward financial security early on. When the wind blows you might bend but you won't break.

2. Acknowledge influences. Recognize the various inputs on your decisions regarding how to live your life.

3. Learn the qualitative differences among different kinds of work. Modern societies have many distinct kinds of problems with careers for each. Which kinds of problems do you really want to work on?

4. Attitudes: develop a better attitude than most by being as honest, reliable, communicative and cooperative as possible. The mistrust and hostility our society encourages generally works against career interactions going well. You can benefit by being an exception.

5. Reality. Maybe you want to do what you love - but others will pay you for what they want and need. Figure out where these two shapes intersect and find your career in that region.

6. People. Learn to recognize, as quickly as possible, who you can trust, who you can't, and the various shadings in between. The right kinds of people can enhance your career just as quickly as the wrong ones can wreck it.

7. Take intelligent chances. Our anxiety-prone societies encourage many of us to become "security junkies." If you are willing to challenge this tendency you will increase your chances of getting what you want. No guarantees, but better chances. Since there really are no guarantees, that's not a bad deal.

Careersanity.com will address all of these issues and many more -- including some of the reasons why you might avoid doing some things that would be likely to help. It’s your career and your life; nobody is remotely as well qualified as you to decide how to proceed. You can read about what has and hasn’t worked for others; you can join the discussions if you like. Hopefully this will save you some time and give you some additional helpful information on which to base your decisions.

Somebody said if they can get you asking the wrong questions they don’t have to worry about the answers. At careersanity.com the plan is to help you come up with some real good answers by asking as many of the right questions as possible.