Choosing a Career: An unconventional approach

Most people end up in their career sub-optimally:

• They fall into their careers by chance.
• They pick from a few common choices: doctor lawyer, teacher, electrician, psychologist, etc.
• With a career advisor, human, video, computer, or text, they inventory, abilities, skills, interests (if they have them, passions), and values.

The latter approach would seem optimal but it’s not:

• It too often yields unrealistic goals—For example, the person dreams of making a solid living as an environmentalist, performer, sports executive, or visual artist. Unless you’re brilliant, talented, connected, or dogged, ideally all the above, they'll why the words “starving” and “artist” so often adjoin.
• Most careers don’t require a narrowly constrained set of attributes. For example, there are introverted and extroverted psychotherapists, brilliant and merely workmanlike ones, sciencey and feeling-oriented ones.
• There are tens of thousands of careers, most that have many variants. Even with a computer to screen careers, you’ll be (not very validly) matched to a few from just a few hundred. Much better fits could remain buried.

A better way?
In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer an approach that would seem to balance ease with accuracy.

In Search of Wisdom: My 13 favorite ideas.

It would be hubristic of me to assert that these attempts at wisdom have reached that high bar, but my Psychology Today article today offers my best shots.

Developing a Winning Personality

Even some brilliant people suffer professionally and personally from the lack of a likeable personality.

And some such people don’t care: “I don’t want to play their silly games.” But if you do care to, as the classic book, said, “win friends and influence people,” perhaps one or more of the tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today will help:

Making Remote Work Work

Whether you call in telecommuting or remote work, it would seem to be a slam-dunk idea. Workers avoid painful commutes, can work in their comfies, and there’s no fire-breathing boss looking over their should to be sure they didn’t dare email their honey or check the March Madness bracket. 

Employers benefit by needing less office space, they can recruit to find the best workers even if far-flung rather than just locally. And employers can attract and retain better employees who are in-demand enough to avoid jobs requiring an ever longer, stressful commute, after which employees arrive at work half-exhausted before they even start work.

Yet most employers still demand butts in the office. Why and what can be done to make remote work for employers and employees. I offer suggestions in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Why Career Counseling Clients Fail

How-to writers tend to present success stories. I’m guilty of that. But of course, much can be learned from failure. 

So in my PsychologyToday.com article today, I describe common ways in which career counseling clients fail and what individuals and counselors can do to help.

Critical Incidents in Parenting

Even with a typical child, parenting is hard and important. It’s ironic that schools prefer to teach geometry and chemistry but not parenting.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers thoughts and sample dialogues on common critical incidents in parenting. After, I list some undergirding principles.

The Anxious Employee

All of us can get anxious at work, for example, if we have an upcoming performance review by an unreasonable boss.

But some people are anxious too much of the time, and the anxiety doesn’t dissipate when they enter the workplace door. If that sounds like you, might any of the ideas I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today help?