The Pitfalls of Not Committing. Decision making is part-and-parcel to…
By: Tite-Live Wasolua Kibeti
Tags: Career Paths, Motivation, Careers, Thoughts

The Pitfalls of Not Committing

Some choices are harder than others, mainly because they take us to unfamiliar grounds.

Decision making is part-and-parcel to the human experience. From spending extended periods of time deliberating on the right course of action for whatever project, deadline or life event you have coming up, to the mundane choices we face such as the meal you’ll be having for dinner, and whether or not you’ll exercise enough discipline to wake up when your alarm clock tells you to. It’s the only way we can truly get anything done, and while this is an obvious statement to make, it’s one that gains even more importance when you have to consider it elsewhere.

For me, that was in my final year of university, coming off the back of the toughest year of my degree but also, and please excuse the dramatics, of my life. My Aerospace Engineering degree had never been a walk in the park, but I am still amazed, and amused even, with the ways it managed to become tougher for me with each semester (not dissimilar to how Game of Thrones Season 1 raised the stakes at hand with every passing episode).

This had given me the push I needed to more seriously concern opportunities beyond the world of engineering, which proved very awkward for someone who’d aspired since a child of going into the field to do. I had also, for a while now, been told about the variety of options that my degree offered me, not by the virtue of the degree itself, but of the multitude of transferable skills that we were drilled in from the very start.

Communication, teamwork, problem solving, time-management — any well practised engineering student could easily answer any set of competency based questions from the experience of their degree alone. From the fields under consideration, consulting, technology, procurement are among the many that became front-runners as viable options. And as someone who’s not only been open-minded, but genuinely curious about whatever bits of knowledge are unknown to me, this became my undoing.

The Problem with Choice(s)

The Hick-Hyman Law lays out the amount of time it takes for individuals to makes decisions depending on the amount of options available to them. Essentially, throwing in just three choices would cause a substantial increase into the amount of time than it would if it was just two, though this difference decreases when dealing with much larger numbers. While this has had very handy applications for those working in User Experience (to make your… well, user experience more enjoyable when you’re browsing the web, or ordering a drink at your local bubble tea shop), it can help deal with choices more easily when the time comes. But I’m sure you’ll agree that that last item isn’t like the others. If anything, the stakes are even higher.

The choice that I faced as I graduated wasn’t only difficult because I had to re-think my career path. It was difficult because I also had to weigh what I desired to do, and balancing this within a frame of reference that still allowed me to grow and attain financial stability. In my case, my treasure trove of interests flooded the array of options I already had before me, in the same vain that one might open up Netflix with a show recommendation to binge, only for you to think twice as it throws its entire catalogue at your eyes.

Among this plethora of interests were: taking my hobby in logo design and expanding on it further, venturing further into programming, and taking a more pertinent look at UI Design. And as graduation came and went, and I found myself on the graduate job market, this desire to switch also let in much dread and anxiety. I’d found that in my pursuit to relieve myself of a great bane, I’d acquired one that was just as taxing on me.

Things did get better. A lot better. And while I did not expect to find myself freelancing in visual design to this extent, I came across opportunities and growth that I wouldn’t have fathomed had it not been for “going with the flow”. And while much insight has been gained from the path I’ve taken, only one in particular pertains to this article.

I’ve not only still got more choice than I know to do with, but that it has still contributed to some of the anxiety that I’ve experienced, albeit reduced and much more managable. And this, coupled with the abundance of conversations I’ve had the privilege of having with friends, has driven home what I and, if this is relevant, you must do when dealing with far too many career options before you: specialise.

A Blank Canvas

In the natural world, all life has adapted to perform tasks in the best way it knows how. From the physiology of a worker ant and the role it plays as part of a colony, to the way that stem cells effectively have genes “turned off” to enable them to become anything from blood cells to brain cells. Your path in life most likely reflects this too. You’ve not only leaned into doing certain school subjects and degrees because you have a bias towards them; you were also good at what you did (at least that’s the general idea). Regardless of what one might like, or do, we inadvertedly are pre-disposed towards playing to our strengths.

Think of people that you respect and who’s success you seek to emulate. Odds are they’re great at what they do because that is all they do; that the dedication they give to their speciality reaps the benefit of being even better at it, through having more conversations, practising more often, and failing more often. Time and energy are finite, and to invest it in too many things is to doom yourself to sluggish growth, all the while ensuring burnout and unhappiness.

For me, this manifested itself as doing a far too-broad set of work as a designer. And I’ve come to find out lately that I’ve really always had an eye for brand design, which has heavily influenced my work process. My other skills are not, however, rendered useless— rather, they complement my starting position in the field, to do more unique and better work.

Yet this is easier said than done. If anything, the challenge lies in discovering what these strengths are, which regardless of whether you have an abundance of interests or not yield the same end result — “Is it worth it? Will it grant me what I seek?”. And even when we do figure these out, a great deal of fear and anxiety can settle in as we begin to act on these, especially when they involve unnerving amounts of ambiguity. That alone can be enough to discourage us from taking much needed action. But inaction can be more damaging, and thus demands an additional component to keep that at bay: discovery.

Seek Out the Unknown

This isn’t a suggestion, but rather a command, for it is the other face to this coin. And the reason is simple: people grow and change with time, and with it, what they seek and need. We’re always going to have interests which lie shy from our respective fields of work - some which we are much more keen on exploring or moving into than others. Conversing with my peers and discussing their success, it is no surprise that they enjoy what they do, but also ventured into these roles and fields unexpectedly (relative to where they were “heading”).

The world of work evolving such that many of us will not necessarily have careers cordoned off to one field or industry, but rather ones which more astutely reflect our passions and growth focuses, the impetus for this has never been stronger. Factor in that many roles allow and even encourage those from various backgrounds to make career pivots by having a producing a good portfolio and picking up a variety of skills via e-learning, and this becomes even more of a viable alternate path for many.

Perhaps what’s made committing feel so scary for so long hasn’t just been the act itself, but also the thought that we are bound to the paths we carve out. But unlike a stem cell which settles down into being any type of cell that our bodies needs, we are fortunate enough, as people, to be able to reinvent ourselves as we see fit, and to therefore morph into being what we need and desire for ourselves.