Sometimes it is okay to just coast

If the next big this isn’t happening, that might just be fine for a while

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I have a few friends who are in a career hangover right now and who are wondering what to do next. I can sympathize with that state because I have been in it too and it sucks major balls. When that happens, my advice generally is: “If it ain’t happening, it ain’t happening, and the harder you try the more you fail. Just do something, anything, for a while and wait for clarity to come.”

Whenever I say that there is often some worry that the promised clarity will not come, but trust me, it will. If there is one thing I consistently find in conversations with the ever growing group (relatively speaking, that is) of younger people, it is that they underestimate the value of the passing of time. I get it, you haven’t experienced a lot of it yet, but really, in the vast majority of cases, time does heal all wounds (and compound interest is the eight wonder of the world).

As I said above, I am writing from a position of some authority because I experienced a few career hangovers myself. The really big one was in 2001-2002, when lots of stuff in my life went wrong and as a result I was burnt out and experiencing a motivation dip that was so big it could properly be called a motivation trough. When that happens, you are not getting a lot done in your life and you are basically just struggling to get out of bed every morning and put your mind to something productive. During that sad state of affairs, you are not your best and most joyous self, which also makes it hard for other people to deal with you. That’s usually fine because your friends and family will still love and put up with you, but it is not a great place from which to engage in networking or job interviews.

At one point during my big dip, I had dinner with a close friend and an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in a while. After dinner, my friend gave me the feedback that the acquaintance had been shocked about how aggressive and negative I had been. I hadn’t realized that at all but, with the help of some reflection, I had to agree with my friend. This was a huge eye opener and taught me a lot about how what is going on inside, influences what you display on the outside.

When I was suffering through all of this, I did not have a lot of energy left for work and also I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So, I did what every depressed software engineer should do in that case: I took a contract as a Java programmer at a bank. Every morning I came in at nine o’clock with my laptop, sat down, coded ex.printStackTrace() statements in empty catch{} blocks for the entire day, and then left to rejoin the mess that was my life.

There are many fun stories from that time. I was so low energy that I didn’t want to deal with any bureaucracy. For instance I didn’t deal with the paperwork needed to get an access badge for the office. Instead, I just filled out a visitor slip every morning and waited for a colleague to come pick me up. After two weeks of that, all the security staff at the reception desk knew me and they started letting me into the building without a chaperone. I managed to get away with that for over a year.

I also didn’t want to use Lotus Notes or a crappy bank Windows laptop, so I just hooked up my laptop to the Ethernet (this was in the days before IEEE 802.1x) and hacked my way around the network to access Internet proxies, printers, and whatnot. When people started complaining that all of my email came from my own company’s domain and that that was insecure, I registered the bank’s domain name in a TLD that they didn’t use and reconfigured my mail server and client to send and receive mail for and as “josv@bank.tld”, which quelled any concerns.

Fun times!

One day, the VP that I was working for came to me and said: “Jos, I do not understand that a man of your talents is sitting here coding Java.” “Shut up Danny”, I told him, “I come here to relax and take a break from the rest of my life.”

Danny was an amazing guy to work for by the way. Whenever there was some problem and I hacked into the systems to solve it without involving the IT department, he asked me how I did that and then immediately corrected himself and said: “Oh no, don’t tell me, because if you tell me, I might have to do something about it.”

What I am trying to say is that this was a time in my career where I did not get a lot of great things done, but I did something and that paid money and that was used to pay the bills, alimony, and child support. So, all things considered, everything was Just Fine™.

Unfortunately, in the winner takes most world that we created, people are constantly triggered to be on the lookout for the Next Big Thing. If we are stuck, the worry that the Next Big Thing apparently is not happening can become quite significant, leading to frustration, which makes it even more unlikely that the Next Big Thing is happening because of all the anxiety involved. So the answer is: Let it go! Accept that it is not happening right now because you are not in the right place to make it happen. You need some clarity on what you want to do next, and the way to get that clarity is not by trying harder.

Compare it to being stuck on a coding or design problem. When and where do you eventually get the solution? While stuck at your desk trying your damnedest to get it fixed? Or in the shower, on the bike, or while swimming? Every engineer knows that the best way to solve a problem is to take your mind off the problem for a bit. Being stuck in a career hangover is just a bigger version of that same situation: Just go do something else for a bit and eventually, magically, the solution will come to you. But, because it is a bigger version of the problem, just taking a hot shower with Dr. Kneipp’s Aroma-Pflegedusche Lebensfreude (translated from German: “Aroma Care Shower Joy of Life”) does not cut it.

So, instead, find some job, any job, and just do it, without the expectations that it needs to be the next big thing. The next time I am stuck, I am going to be a Starbucks barista for a while as they seem to be a happy lot who always seem to be having a good time, which makes sense as they are blessed with customers who do not expect any product quality; just a friendly associate who recognizes them is more than enough.

Plus as a barista I can also reliably keep the WiFi going, which should be an in-demand skill at most Starbucks locations.

Irony note: I am writing this at a Starbucks in Boston 🙂

Accepting that you are taking some job just to pay the bills takes a load of stress off and it will give you some time to relax. When I took the Java coding job at a bank I was also eying a role as a system administrator at a medium-sized Dutch town. I figured that keeping the HP-UX system going would take my Monday morning and a few shell scripts, leaving the rest of the week free to read the newspaper and drink coffee with my colleagues.

Not every role has to be a huge step up from your previous one. Not every month needs to be spent on reaching, what exactly? Early retirement? VP at 35? We have fallen victim to the fallacy that every job needs to be exciting, every role needs to challenge you, every second spent at work needs to be in service of winning the rat race. That’s all great when you are in mint condition, but when things are not going well, acknowledge that and take time to recover.

Do you know what athletes do when they are suffering from an injury? They rest and recover, and eventually they get on a regimen of careful exercise to get back into the game. If you are suffering from a mental injury, you should do the same.