Creating a Laboratory for Work 🧪 - by Matt Yao

Why do we expect to get promoted, but don’t anticipate career pivots? Our default is to keep marching forward along a pre-determined trajectory rather than rest, wander, or even turn back around. As a society, we know how to celebrate predictable advances up the corporate ladder, but we lack the language, process, and institutions to welcome transitions in work. By transitions, I don’t mean simply going from one company to another, I mean a larger transformation from one line of work to a completely different one. I believe part of this disconnect can be explained by the stories that we tell ourselves. We devour stories of successful individuals. We watch their interviews, read their biographies, and buy their products. We study their childhoods, daily routines, and big decisions. We even map their habits, diets, and idiosyncrasies to our own. The problem is most popular stories fall under one of two types. The first story is about early commitment. A young boy or girl discovers their

Why do we expect to get promoted, but don’t anticipate career pivots? Our default is to keep marching forward along a pre-determined trajectory rather than rest, wander, or even turn back around. As a society, we know how to celebrate predictable advances up the corporate ladder, but we lack the language, process, and institutions to welcome transitions in work. By transitions, I don’t mean simply going from one company to another, I mean a larger transformation from one line of work to a completely different one. I believe part of this disconnect can be explained by the stories that we tell o