career agency: the unspoken weapon for unconventional careerists

Over a year ago, I did something that raised quite a few eyebrows: I quit my “prestigious” job as a tenure-track Economics lecturer to work for a YouTuber. Over a year into this transition, one thing I've learned is that the hardest part of an unconventional career usually isn't the day-to-day work - it's figuring out how to grow without a predefined path. Success in unconventional careers requires an enormous amount of self-direction. You need to be both the employee and the manager, both the worker and the career counselor. In Part I of this series, I walked through how I decided to leave academia. In this piece, I want to share what I've learned about making an unconventional path “work”. I think this is the guide I wish I had when I started exploring the world of unconventional careers. I'm fortunate that my current role with the Ali Abdaal team has great professional development guidance - many of the strategies I'll share below were actually inspired by practices and experiences

Over a year ago, I did something that raised quite a few eyebrows: I quit my “prestigious” job as a tenure-track Economics lecturer to work for a YouTuber. Over a year into this transition, one thing I've learned is that the hardest part of an unconventional career usually isn't the day-to-day work - it's figuring out how to grow without a predefined path. Success in unconventional careers requires an enormous amount of self-direction. You need to be both the employee and the manager, both the worker and the career counselor. In Part I of this series, I walked through how I decided to leave ac