The paradox of career choices

We live in a day where we have an endless amount of choices. So many, in fact, that it can become overwhelming and debilitating to a point. Just this idea for the younger generation to pick a career path is beyond overwhelming compared to millennials. When we were kids, you could choose a doctor, lawyer, electrician, etc. In today's job market, you can be all those things and more—a race car Uber driver, a copywriter that only reviews baby products, to a person that films themselves sleeping. It's stupid and great and also a paradox because the more choices we have, the more we feel like we made the wrong choice when there are so many options.

This paradox of choice is this idea that the more choices you have, the better, right? The free market decides what is good and what is bad through our choices. The flip side of this is with so many things to choose from, we are never 100% satisfied with our choices because what if we made the wrong decision? Which makes our choices less satisfying. And being young, you can sit around and try this and that. But once you get older, you have to choose something to do with your life and become a master at it.

Knowing this is even scarier because that means it takes a long time to get good at one thing, meaning we can only choose a couple of things to do with our lives if we want to get good at it. And hopefully make a living off it. This paradox means nothing if you feel like you messed up and chose the wrong career path; then you only have one or more times you can change. Your choices become far more important, far more overwhelming, and ultimately you end up with this voice in the back of your head saying, "Was this the right path?" Which leads to insecurity and doubt about our chosen lives.

They did a study on families that had to choose to take their dying family member off life support. Grim, I know, but hear me out on this one. They asked a plethora of people about how they felt about this. One group had to make the decision to keep life support on or off. The other group didn't get a decision; the doctor made it for them. The group that had to decide their doubts and regret and mourning process was far more difficult than the families that had no choice. This is a paradox of choice; it puts doubt and regret into every decision we make the more decisions there are, leading to a less happy and content life than what we choose.

So growing up now with millions of options just on one subject, a career, how do you choose only one or two things to focus your whole life on? People hate the fact that you have to restrict your options to become a master at one thing. This idea that you have to choose sucks. Why can't I be this and that and a little bit of those things over there? The problem with that is, you become the average Joe, the person that doesn't do anything. Job hopping is a good thing because it shows you what you don't want to do with your life. But job hopping until you're 60-70 years old, there will come a point when no one wants to hire a new recruit that knows nothing at that age, when there is a younger, more energised option next to you at the job interview.

So how do we decide in a world with infinite options? How do we navigate this wonderful and debilitating free market? The way to navigate this is to find what you enjoy, find what you're naturally good at, and check to see if that is the kind of lifestyle you want to have. Being a writer is great, but if you hate the idea of living in front of a computer or a blank piece of paper and you enjoy talking to people more, maybe you should become a podcaster instead of a writer. It's these little things that we know about ourselves and that we need to navigate to figure out what we like and are good at, interested or curious about, that can direct us in a direction.

So knowing this and doing a ton of self-reflection, we can navigate this choice paradox. So we can find what feel like play to us, but feels like work to other people. And if we already know who we are and already have a career, we should be kinder and more patient with the younger generation that is trying to figure it out.