Tackling the Paradox of Choice

I read a review this week of 'Not Working' a debut novel by Lisa Owens. It's about a twenty something woman who gives up her job in marketing career to find out what she wants to do with her life. Rather than quickly finding her 'passion', she procrastinates, faced with too many options and too much time to think, and her morale plummets: “If I can just digest enough TED talks, self-improvement podcasts, overviews on the Aristotelian sense of purpose and first-hand accounts of former City workers who set up artisan businesses from their kitchen tables, then surely the answer will reveal itself?”

This may ring bells for a few of you - it took me back to my own uncertainties when I was trying to work out what to do with my life after my career break. I wrote this blog post back in 2013 about how I got past the 'choice paralysis' ...

When I was on a career break after stepping out of my first career in strategy/marketing, I realised after a while that being a full-time at-home mother was not for me. I knew that I wanted to do something enjoyable and flexible and spent many hours dreaming and chatting with friends about what this might be. One month a friend and I got excited about importing baby equipment from Australia … then a few months later I was inspired to set up a family-focused travel agency … then it was a flexible childcare business ... then studying psychology. I was never short of ideas but the interesting thing was that the more options I thought of, and the more I talked about them and researched them on the internet, the more problems I could see and the further I became from actually doing them. Eventually I was reluctant to share my next great idea with my friends as I had stopped believing myself that I was actually going to make any of them happen. Somehow having too many choices was stopping me pursuing any one option more seriously.

When I went on to study psychology, I found that my experience is so common that it has a label: the Paradox of Choice. Too much choice in everyday life can make us confused and paralysed. The psychologist Barry Schwartz in his book and TED talk on this topic explained "with so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all". As no choice is perfect, we can always imagine that we will find a better alternative. And the effect can be stronger with more complex choices, such as career decisions. We are less likely to hit 'choice overload' if we are clear on our preferences or have a simple way to compare between options.

What got me out of the choice paralysis was realising that first of all I needed to develop some decision criteria to work out what I wanted from my life, so that I could weigh up my alternatives. While all options were appealing, with some positives and some negatives, I was unable to prioritise. When I became clearer on what was most important to me and where I could compromise, I was able to discount many of my ideas and to focus on the one that seemed the best fit. Then I needed to push myself to stop thinking/talking and start taking action. I dipped an exploratory toe in the water by enrolling on an introduction to psychology course and that was the first step on the road to retraining as a psychologist.

Some of the returners I meet also see too many possibilities and may have been thinking and talking about all the things they could do for years without making any concrete progress. One woman had a list of the pros and cons of the 16 options she had been considering - unsurprisingly she felt very confused about where to go next! If you too are hitting choice overload, aim to narrow your focus to get down to a manageable number of choices to investigate:

1. Work out what is most important to you in your future job. Fine to start with 1) flexible 2) pays enough, but then go beyond that. What are you missing about work (is it using your brain, the achievement, the social aspect, ...), what are you really interested in, what are you good at and love doing?  If you’re wondering where to start with this process, look at some of our other posts on these topics or at Build your Own Rainbow.
2. Use this to work out what you want from work, decide what are 'must-haves' and where you can compromise. You can then choose a few possibilities that really appeal and seem like they could be a good fit for you. And don't fall into the trap of looking for the perfect job as all jobs involve trade-offs.
3. Critically don't spend more time thinking - practically reality test your short-list: talk to people in the area, maybe take a short course, go to a conference, work shadow, do an internship … test your ideas and learn along the way. 

Having choices and being open to possibilities is a great thing – don’t let it keep you stuck!

Further Reading

Prone to procrastination? Tips to help you move forward

Using your instincts in career decision-making

Are you overthinking your career decisions?

Posted by Julianne

Taking control of your return to work

Some of the women on career break we meet at our workshops or who write to us for advice believe they have little hope of returning to work. They express this in the following ways:

"employers are only looking for young people these days"
"there are no opportunities for [my job function] anymore"
"no employers are interested in people with a CV gap"
"the only jobs are in the cities and I live in the country"

If any of these comments sound familiar, you may think that you're just stating the truth - that the employment environment is closed to you and that nothing you can do will change this. 

However, thinking this way can mean that you give up control - you make yourself powerless. If you believe that there's no likelihood of success, you have little motivation to even explore how you might get back to work .. so, of course, you're very unlikely to make it happen.  

How to regain control

• Be aware of what you're telling yourself. Are you are making generalised, 'black-and-white' statements about the employment environment (using words like 'only' and 'no' is a good clue)? If so, you can start to challenge your thinking: e.g. are ALL employers ONLY looking for young people?
• Consider what is within your control. What realistic options do you have open to you for returning to work? This could include investigating work-from-home ideas, looking for local options, exploring relevant returnships and other returner programmes, developing your network, retraining in a new field.
• Start taking action. Through taking action such as talking to former colleagues, re-joining a professional association or attending information events about a possible new field you will gain knowledge, potential contacts and, most importantly, a sense that you are in charge again.

For further reading:
Too few choices: advice on identifying post break options
Are 'shoulds' ruling your return to work decisions?
How to make time for your return to work job search
How to return to work after a long career break
Is it possible to return to work at 50+ after a career break?



Posted by Katerina

Are you overthinking your career decisions?

Do you find yourself having lots of work ideas but for some reason not actually doing anything about them? Do you spend hours talking about & researching options & thinking about pros & cons .. but never making any real progress? 

The Overthinking Trap

I’ve worked with many women considering what to do after a career break and many of them fall into this overthinking trap. In our former working lives we often succeeded because of our ability to mentally work through solutions to problems and this is our default. We get fooled that we can think ourselves into a decision. 
But the 'what shall I do with my life?' career questions can rarely be solved just by brain-power. What you really need to do is to start taking practical actions. And I don’t mean firing off your CV when you’re not yet sure what you want to do – it’s about finding ways to try out your options before deciding where you want to commit.  Professor Herminia Ibarra in her career change book ‘Working Identity’ calls this a ‘test & learn’ approach. She warns that waiting to act until you know what to do next can keep you stuck: “Doing comes first, knowing second”.

Start Doing

• If you’re wondering whether to go back to your old company/field: Get back in touch with old colleagues for an initial exploratory chat; ask about small projects or freelance work; take a refresher course.
• If you’re not sure if you want to do something new: Find people who are doing the job - go to an industry event or look for friends of friends – and talk to them about their roles; take a short course; do related voluntary work or find/create an internship.
• And if you’re thinking of setting up a business, find some entrepreneurs to talk to or go to a start-up workshop like Enterprise Nation's Start Up Saturday.
• For more ideas see our return-to-work success stories.

Once you have some ideas on future options, it is more doing not more thinking that will get you clearer on the route you want to take.

This is an amended version of our guest post for the Mumsnet Workfest blog. Workfest is on 7th June 2014 in London:"an inspirational and helpful day for women returning to work post maternity or an extended career break, those looking to switch jobs, as well as those embarking on a new business venture. We're running 2 sessions:

• Returning to work after an extended career break 
• Tackling your fears, doubts and guilt

Hope to meet some of you there!

Posted by Julianne