Reassess imagined versus real non-negotiables

In this episode, we explore how to de-risk your career roadmap by identifying the hidden vulnerabilities that hold your decision-making hostage.

🎧 Episode Notes: De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities

True career growth requires gaining autonomy over your choices. This episode provides a framework for performing a "pre-mortem" of career failure by identifying the sources of power that currently influence your life and limiting their leverage over your future.

• Identify Your Sources of Power: Perform an exercise to list the people, situations, and physical things (like money or debt) that drive your current decision-making and could shift your behavior if they changed.
• Conduct a Career "Pre-mortem": Use this diagnostic approach to recognize what has the power to change your decisions, helping you prepare for potential failures before they occur.
• Understand the "Hostage" Dynamic: Realize that while some leverage is aligned with your values, other factors—like large amounts of debt—can hold your career hostage, forcing you to make decisions you otherwise wouldn't.
• Balance Vulnerability and Autonomy: Distinguish between healthy vulnerability (such as in relationships with family) and unhealthy vulnerability (such as with creditors), and work to de-risk the latter to reclaim your agency.
• The Link Between Debt and Career Risk: Learn how eliminating financial vulnerabilities, like credit card debt, increases your autonomy, potentially allowing you to take "principled" career risks you previously couldn't afford.
• Re-evaluate Your Non-Negotiables: Use introspection to determine which parts of your job are truly essential and which "imagined" risks are preventing you from seeking better alignment with your personal purpose.
• Shift Your Control Systems: Understand that growth often requires giving up control in one area (like spending habits) to gain control and autonomy in your professional path.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio

Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again. With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and more on the functionalities that matter most: ● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub. ● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions. ● And ship faster with Wix Studio’s AI code assistant. All of that, wrapped up in auto-maintained infrastructure for total peace of mind. Work in a developer-first ecosystem. Go to wixstudio.com.

📮 Ask a Question

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

📮 Join the Discord

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community today!

🧡 Leave a Review

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content, head over to iTunes and leave a review!