How To Make A Tough Career Decision, When You're An Anxiety-Riddled Lunatic?

The story: I’m an artist currently making my living with design work and small teaching gigs. I’ve been offered a relatively decent academic job in a place my partner and I don’t want to live. We love where we’re living now, I’m fairly happy with my job(s), and have a decent amount of time to pursue my artwork.

The complications: My partner is quitting her job—the one that has given us a steady and reliable source of income while I’ve been freelancing. No matter what we decide to do, she will be quitting to try and make a go of her own creative career, which has been steadily gaining momentum in her spare time. The ideal for her would be for us to do this together, to combine our creative/art/design pursuits into a joint business venture, and go for it. And when I think about how I ideally want to spend my days, making things with her is a no-brainer.

However, facing the prospect of making a go of our art careers has me almost paralyzed with fear. In the typical situation, I would be telling you that my big fear is moving across country for this job, and you would be telling me to face my fears and do it. And while the idea of a move to a disappointing place coupled with a potentially time-and-creativity-sucking job in academia is indeed cripplingly fearsome, the idea of staying here, giving up our safety nets, attempting to live as artists--and failing--is HORRIFYING. Basically, my worst fear: confirmation that we don’t have what it takes.

My ultimate goal in life is to make art, every second of every day. But I have, of course, been taught to believe that that’s basically impossible, and that an academic job is fraught with complications but ultimately necessary. And I do love teaching, but all of the teachers I know are barely able to pursue their artwork anymore.

We’re still young, we have energy, love, boundless creativity and few responsibilities (no house, no kids), a healthy cushion saved up, and my partner will continue to receive her salary for three months after quitting. If we stay and it doesn’t work out, we won’t starve. There are many temp jobs we’re qualified for, people willing to take us in, and there’s always next year’s (equally tempestuous and uncertain) academic job market. It would be our dream to stay in the city we adore, with our friends and professional connections, and be able to live off of our creative work together. That’s the daily life I get most excited about. And yet the prospect of really going for it has me paralyzed with fear, instinctively looking for the first salaried position I can find. Do we take the flat road, the reasonably safe and secure choice, or do we jump off the freaking cliff? I realize this is a decision that only we can make, and that I’ve left things too vague to solicit good advice…

My actual question, friends, is what strategies are there for making this decision in an intelligent way, without becoming blinded by anxiety? How do we weigh all the different variables? What aspects of the decision are forgetting to even consider? And once a decision has been made, how do I move forward without second-guessing, or succumbing to fear or regret?

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Career Decision Making Process

Many students are challenged from the moment they enter NU to answer the question: "What career are you going to choose?" In order to make a career decision that is right for you, you must engage in the career decision making process.

The career decision process is:

...A process that takes time. You cannot make a good decision until you have adequate information about yourself and the world of work of self knowledge and information gathering, as well as having experiences that point you in a direction that is right for you.

...A proactive process. No one can tell you what you should do, and a career decisions will not appear through thin air. You must take the time and the effort to engage in actions that will help you to make decisions. You must also be self-reflective about these activities. You cannot just take in information, you must reflect on how this information fits with your own interests, values and skills. There are things that you can do during all 4 years at Northwestern to increase your chances of making a decision that is right for you.

...Not a linear process. While there are specific steps that can be taken, there is no specific order in which these steps should be taken, and you may repeat steps throughout the process. Some tips for beginning the process:

...Examine your motivation for engaging in the process Many students will begin the process because they feel pressured by others (parents, peers, advisors), or because they in some way feel that they are “behind”. Your journey must come from a genuine desire to engage in self discovery.

...Challenge any myths you have about the career decision making process

...Be open to new experiences and ideas. We only see or hear about a few careers fields on a day to day basis. New careers are being created every day. In addition don't be afraid to experiment with new roles in student groups, the classroom, or at work to discover new information about your skills and interests.

...Be aware of external influences on your decision making. Are you following in the footsteps of peers, parents, and advisors, or are the decisions you are making truly your own? How does your culture, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status influence your decision?

It is not uncommon to work with both a career counselor and an internship advisor/job search advisor at the same time. What is most important is that you are engaging in the process and taking steps towards a future that is fulfilling and meaningful.

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Guide to Career Decision Making

Exploring information about what is possible and deciding what to do are both part of the same process. Don't worry if you don't feel committed to one direction yet, career decisions take time and research to evolve. The important thing is to start finding out about what is out there to help the process along.

Guide to Career Decision Making

When trying to choose a career or make a decision about further study, you should:

• know yourself
• know your options
• know how you usually make decisions
• know what influences, and perhaps blocks, your decision making

The relationship between these objectives is outlined in the diagram below.

	Thinking about my decision making
	| \/
	Knowing how I make decisions
	| \/
Knowing about myself	<--      -->	Knowing about my options

To see this model of decision making in more detail click here.

You already know you need to make a decision so: 

Step 1 is to clarify what you know about yourself. You might consider your skills, interests, values, and, if your decision involves more learning, your preferred learning style. Interests are what you enjoy doing; skills are what you do well; and values are what motivate you to work. Your learning style is how you prefer to learn.
In terms of your career journey, interests tell you what direction to pursue; skills tell you how long it will take to get there; and values tell you whether or not the journey is worth taking.

Step 2 is to explore the options and see how what you know about yourself fits them, eliminating the options that don't. This helps you draw up a short list of ideas that you want to decide about. It may involve both expanding and contracting the list of ideas over a period of time as you get more information and experience to fill the gaps in your knowledge.

Step 3 is to decide what you really want to go for from the short list. To make a good decision at this point and later on, you need to step back a bit and examine your own decision making style - how you typically make decisions - and the advantages and disadvantages of that. We can suggest different methods and tools, but only you can know if they will work for you. If you have a lot of difficulty at this stage you may need to go up a level to...

Step 4 - thinking about what influences your decision making, and sort it out - perhaps with the help of a careers adviser or student counsellor.

Source: http://www.careers.stir.ac.uk

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How to Make Career Decisions

I've been teaching a career management course for 30 years, first at HBS and then here at the Darden School, UVA. I'm surprised at how important career decisions are to people and at how little rigor they bring to those decisions. The result is a modified trial-and-error methodology that unfortunately leads to current statistics of something like 5-8 career changes for most graduating MBAs. People use a variety of techniques for making career decisions: serendipity, opportunistic, creation, and peer pressure. Given the high proportion of habitual behavior among most people, a matching approach seems to be the obvious best approach. By matching approach, I mean making decisions based on goodness of fit between personal habits or enduring life themes and the demands of any particular job, career or organizational culture.

The problem is that most people don't know themselves well enough and in enough detail to make a good decision based on goodness of fit between themselves and the demands of a job. Well, you might say, I know myself well. Really? What are your habitual ways of thinking? How do you prefer to process information? What's your preferred social structure and style? Have you analyzed your preferred lifestyle? What about your analytic skills? Energy level? Biochemical brain balances leading to or away from ADD, OCD, BPD, etc.? The danger with any degree of self awareness is what we might call "benign self deception." If you make career decisions based on your momentary reflections of who you are and what you want, be careful! You may overlook some key factors (habits or themes) in your life that will surface after you've taken the job--and then you'll be looking again.

Those who make career decisions on a rigorous self assessment are likely to make better decisions than those who don't. So then the question is, "how can I get a good self assessment to use in my career search and decision making?" There are thousands of self assessment tools out there, some of them trash and some of them quite helpful. But consider this premise: no single instrument is accurate enough or comprehensive enough to give you confidence in making career decisions.

There are just too many variables to consider in one instrument and too many variables in the answering of the questionnaire items to trust your career future or even a part of it to one instrument. The answer is to take several self assessment tools and look for the repeating patterns or themes or the tips of iceberg habits that appear across instruments. This requires some time and effort and some skill at inductive logic (looking at the data and generating the principles). Too much time and effort your say? Compare that with the cost of time and effort in working in a job that doesn't fit you and then doing it all over again in 1-3 years. Why not invest up front and narrow your career search to the band of jobs that would likely fit you better?

My colleagues and I have ported the text I used (and was the lead author on--Self Assessment and Career Development) to the web to offer this kind of service. You can preview it at http://careerbuildertools.blogspot.com There are more than a dozen instruments there for you to use in your search for a rigorous listing of your career defining personal characteristics. But whether you use Career Next Step or not, whenever you approach your next major personal or professional decision, please, consider carefully (preferably data-based) your dominant Life Themes (cognitive, interpersonal, social, professional, etc.) before you decide. If you choose ignoring them, the odds are you'll be unhappy and be making the same decision again shortly. Save yourself a boat load of time and effort by investing in a good self assessment up front.

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Decision Making

Decision making in simple terms is an individual human activity focused on particular matters (e.g., buying a car) which largely independent of others kinds of choice (e.g., buying a house, selecting a meal from a menu). In more formal terms, decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes (cognitive process) leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion.

Human performance in decision making terms has been subject of active research from several perspectives. From a psychological perspective, it is necessary to examine individual decisions in the context of a set of needs and desired results an individual has . From a cognitive perspective, the decision making process must be regarded as a continuous process integrated in the interaction with the environment.

Yet, at another level, it might be regarded as a problem solving activity which is terminated when a solution is found. Therefore, decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational, can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions.

Decision making is said to be a psychological construct. This means that although we can never "see" a decision, we can infer from observable behavior that a decision has been made. Therefore, we conclude that a psychological event that we call "decision making" has occurred. It is a construction that imputes commitment to action. That is, based on observable actions, we assume that people have made a commitment to affect the action.

There are many decision making levels having a participation element. A common example is that of institutions making decisions that affect those for whom they provide. In such cases an understanding of what participation level is involved becomes crucial to understand the process and power structures dynamics.

Control-Ethics. When organizations/institutions make decisions it is important to find the balance between the parameters of control mechanisms and the ethical principles which ensure 'best' outcome for individuals and communities impacted on by the decision. Controls may be set by elements such as Legislation, historical precedents, available resources, Standards, policies, procedures and practices. Ethical elements may include equity, fairness, transparency, social justice, choice, least restrictive alternative, empowerment.

Decision making in one's personal life
Some of the decision making techniques that we use in everyday life include:
• listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option
• flipping a coin, cutting a deck of playing cards, and other random or coincidence methods
• accepting the first option that seems like it might achieve the desired result
• prayer, tarot cards, astrology, augurs, revelation, or other forms of divination
• acquiesce to a person in authority or an "expert"
• Calculating the expected value or utility for each option. For example, a person is considering two jobs. At the first job option the person has a 60% chance of getting a 30% percent raise in the first year. And at the second job option the person has an 80% chance of getting a 10% raise in the first year. The decision maker would calculate the expected value of each option, calculating the probability multiplied by the increase of value. (0.60*0.30=0.18 [option a] 0.80*0.10=0.08 [option b]) The person deciding on the job would chose the option with the highest expected value, in this example option number one.

An alternative may be to apply one of the processes described below, in particular in the Business and Management section.

Decision making in healthcare
In the health care field, the steps of making a decision may be remembered with the mnemonic BRAND, which includes
• Benefits of the action
• Risks in the action
• Alternatives to the prospective action
• Nothing: that is, doing nothing at all
• Decision

Decision making in business and management
In general, business and management systems should be set up to allow decision making at the lowest possible level.
Several decision making models or practices for business include:
• SWOT Analysis - Evaluation by the decision making individual or organization of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats with respect to desired end state or objective.
• Analytic Hierarchy Process - procedure for multi-level goal hierarchy
• Buyer decision processes - transaction before, during, and after a purchase
• Complex systems - common behavioral and structural features that can be modeled
• Corporate finance:
o The investment decision
o The financing decision
o The dividend decision
o working capital management decisions
• Cost-benefit analysis - process of weighing the total expected costs vs. the total expected benefits
• Control-Ethics, a decision making framework that balances the tensions of accountability and 'best' outcome.
• Decision trees
o Decision analysis - the discipline devoted to prescriptive modeling for decision making under conditions of uncertainty.
o Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
o critical path analysis
o critical chain analysis
• Force field analysis - analyzing forces that either drive or hinder movement toward a goal
• Game theory - the branch of mathematics that models decision strategies for rational agents under conditions of competition, conflict and cooperation.
• Grid Analysis - analysis done by comparing the weighted averages of ranked criteria to options. A way of comparing both objective and subjective data.
• Hope and fear (or colloquially greed and fear) as emotions that motivate business and financial players, and often bear a higher weight that the rational analysis of fundamentals, as discovered by neuroeconomics research
• Linear programming - optimization problems in which the objective function and the constraints are all linear
• Min-max criterion
• Model (economics)- theoretical construct of economic processes of variables and their relationships
• Monte Carlo method - class of computational algorithms for simulating systems
• Morphological analysis - all possible solutions to a multi-dimensional problem complex
• optimization
o constrained optimization
• Paired Comparison Analysis - paired choice analysis
• Pareto Analysis - selection of a limited of number of tasks that produce significant overall effect
• Robust decision - making the best possible choice when information is incomplete, uncertain, evolving and inconsistent
• Satisfying - In decision-making, satisfying explains the tendency to select the first option that meets a given need or select the option that seems to address most needs rather than seeking the “optimal” solution.
• Scenario analysis - process of analyzing possible future events
• Six Thinking Hats - symbolic process for parallel thinking
• Strategic planning process - applying the objectives, SWOTs, strategies, programs process
• Trend following and other imitations of what other business deciders do, or of the current fashions among consultants.

Decision-makers and influencers
In the context of industrial goods marketing, there is much theory, and even more opinion, expressed about how the various 'decision-makers' and 'influencers' (those who can only influence, not decide, the final decision) interact. Decisions are frequently taken by groups, rather than individuals, and the official buyer often does not have authority to make the decision.

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