Before You Quit Your First Job After College
Try applying the gaming approach to your situation
Maybe you hate your job.
Or maybe you just find it ok. Tolerable.
Perhaps wherever you are, you even have a few good days every now and then. But the rest of the time things are fairly, well, meh…
Someone asks, “What to do you do?” And you feel like you need to look down at your feet because you’re miserable doing the thing that you picked to do for your first bigger(ish) paychecks after graduation.
Just so you know — you’re not alone.
My first job out of college I was a fish out of water.
A Communications Major, of all things, who landed in The Construction Industry. I doubt there’s ever been the proverbial greenhorn who was “greener” than I was on Day 1.
At the end of my college years — as a fresh newlywed — I was only interested in exploring job opportunities that would:
a) Pay nicely, and b) Allow my wife and I the ability to live somewhere near our families in Dallas, TX.
So I set out in search of anything meeting that criteria.
The Construction industry in Dallas offered solid prospects for job placement at the time, and I thought…why not? I’ll give this a try. So I went to a career fair, somehow landed a few job interviews, and then miraculously convinced a good company to offer me a position.
Never mind that I had historically not been the most mechanically inclined individual. Nor was I particularly fond of, or adept in, the realm of mathematics, engineering, or architecture. (You know, the kinds of traits essential for launching out into the construction field?)
I was immediately in over my head.
I not only deeply questioned whether or not I’d ever figure out how to perform at a level capable of not getting fired, but perhaps even more dauntingly, I was plagued with wrestling a nagging feeling that this particular vocational realm simply wasn’t “me.”
It wasn’t my place. I wasn’t meant for this.
I was meant to write. To market. To sell. To spend the better part of my days contributing something that I felt actually mattered to the world.
Something that Chris Guillebeau defines as the intersection of Joy, Money & Flow. I was making some money in my new career, sure. But I definitely wasn’t earning it with any “Joy”, and there was certainly no “Flow” to be found anywhere early on.
Can you identify?
Are you stuck in a profession that you just know in your heart of hearts isn’t what you were “meant” to be doing?
Are you constantly scanning the interwebs for that perfect job that will rescue you from your initial failed foray into the grown up world?
If so, let me posit that you have two clear low hanging fruit options at your disposal:
Option A — Leave
You could just leave. You could quit and find something else. Anything else, in an effort to solve your sudden existential dilemma of having already veered your ideal life plan off of it’s trajectory.
You could call a recruiter to course correct.
You could jump at the first option that comes available to you.
You could manufacture an entry into another sphere of the market place or move to another city.
However, if you choose this option, remember to be aware of one important caveat.
Wherever you do decide to go — you’re unfortunately going to be taking yourself with you.
Look, sometimes we think we need to change our environment in the pursuit of happiness, and we’re right.
BUT…
Very often these environmental changes offer little lasting impact because we simply end up transporting our own misguided discontentment, restlessness and baggage onto the next place.
How do you know you’re going to be happier elsewhere?
Are you positive you can’t make it work wherever you’re at?
If you had complete mastery over the domain you’re in now, would you feel as unsettled?
If you were wildly successful — counted upon by others and perceived as a key to the success of the greater team — are you certain you’d be just as uneasy as you are presently?
The grass is almost never greener elsewhere, and there’s a reason that you’ve landed wherever you are.
So pause for a moment.
Perhaps what you need isn’t a change in scenery, but rather a tweak in perspective.
Instead of running the risk of ending up in a worse situation — evaluate whether or not there are any redeemable aspects to your current landing spot. Examine whether or not there are potentially any valuable skills, relationships, or lessons to be gleaned.
Consider throwing this formative opportunity into the Crockpot in lieu of trying to Microwave your way to a better situation.
If your interest is peaked right now, or if your answers to any of the above questions were a “No” or even a “Maybe”, then before you go off and potentially make a regrettable mistake — hear me out on Option B:
Option B — The Gaming Approach
Try adopting what we’ll call “The Gaming Approach” to your career.
After the initial shell shock of realizing I didn’t think I belonged at my first job — something interesting happened.
I was surviving.
Though not yet thriving, I came to the conclusion that no one was going to attempt to eat me at in this vocation. Nor could they if they tried. And I wasn’t going to lose my life over this supposed early career crisis.
Ultimately, I slowly realized that my place of work was not the narrative on my identity — it was simply a game to be figured out.
And what is a game, really?
Check out some of the highlights from what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool…
Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role….
Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures.
Let’s break your situation down into a few different areas:
- Tools
- Rules
- Skills & Strategies
- Teammates
Tools
“Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.” — Arthur Miller
Every game contains within it a set of tools designed for the explicit purpose of helping you advance and win. Learning the purpose and benefit of the tools help you master the domain of the game.
Without a complete understanding of the tools in place — prospects for success are drastically reduced.
As a closet creative trapped in the construction industry, it took me a while to figure out which way was up.
However, once I did get my bearings, it became clear to me that human capital, relational capital, and technical knowledge were far and away the most important influencing factors for success both internally and externally within my industry.
And I had the ability to exploit all of them — albeit with varying levels of degree.
Examine your current vocational situation.
What are the tools for success?
If you mastered them and could wield them at will — how would that change anything?
Are they transferable to any other field or ambitions and therefor useful to you right now?
Rules
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” — Unknown
Games are often characterized by their tools, but defined by their rules.
The important thing to remember about rules is that they are subject to variability and change. And if the rules are modified enough — then the result is often a new game altogether.
Swap out a baseball for a wiffleball and you end up with a new game entirely.
In my corner of the construction industry, conventional wisdom was often that the lowest price would win the job.
Those were the “rules.”
If you couldn’t compete with the lowest bidders then you might as well not compete at all. However, it became apparent over time, that with a certain approach, one could change the rules of the game completely.
By deploying a deeply intentional and long term method for acquiring business — through relationship building, gaining the trust of clients, and providing solutions to their problems — one could alter the very field in which the game was being played.
What are the rules for the game your company is playing?
How do you win?
Can you create a new game?
Would this be incentive to stay in it?
Skills & Strategies
“All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” — Sun Tzu
For nearly every competitive game, the ultimate objective is to win. However, when you think about the objectives of a game, there are also intermediate aims at hand — and skills that are necessary for accomplishing them.
These are the strategic targets you have to hit, accomplish or complete in order to win the game, as well as the abilities necessary along the way.
For example, an intermediate objective in soccer is to score goals, because scoring goals will drastically increase your probability of wining the game.
Though scoring goals alone is not the singular aim for guaranteeing a victory, building a strategy around optimizing an elite goal scoring offense will naturally lead to success.
You get my point here.
In the parallel of my experience — there were plenty of companies and even individuals who could get a project completed on time and under budget.
The biggest wins came when we were able to differentiate ourselves from the competition. Or when I was able to differentiate myself from a crowd of seemingly similar employee candidates.
What’s your company’s strategy for winning?
How are you uniquely wired and positioned for helping them with their cause?
And again, what could the benefits be for you down the road in doing so?
Teammates
“The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.” — Kobe Bryant
This is where your concern moves beyond yourself and onto others.
Most games involve the participation and dynamic of team play. Teammates work together towards one shared ultimate objective. Team members establish goals, execute decisions, communicate, resolve conflict, and solve complex problems in a supportive, trusting environment for the sake of accomplishing their objectives.
The dark forces of this world do their best to isolate us from one another, and early on in my career I fought a “me against the world” mentality. In my mind it was our company versus our competitors. It was me against all of the peers around me who were trying to climb the same corporate ladder.
Eventually though, my perspective evolved and I began to realize the value and importance of a team-oriented mindset.
Trade partners, clients, and architects were no longer adversaries — they grew into allies. Colleagues became friends and advocates rather than challengers to my potential individual success.
There has been no happier or more rewarding and fulfilling time in my career than the instances in which I felt I was doing inspired work as a part of a larger team.
Are there teams that exist in your workplace currently?
How can you provide value to them?
If they aren’t there, how could you play a role in bringing them together?
In Closing
Am I saying that you might as well go ahead and handcuff yourself to your desk because you need to be at your current place of work forever?
Of course not.
This isn’t a marriage.
I’m not suggesting that your present situation needs to be a “till death do you part” arrangement. What I am saying, is that it’s possible that you shouldn’t leave yet.
It’s possible that there are good forces who desire to reward you in ways that you can’t expect for sticking it out longer than your first impulse would prefer.
Just as your affections for a game can grow by the time you’ve finished playing — such can be the case with your current career stop.
Sometimes the universe has you right where you need to be.
That was certainly the case for me.
Here’s how you can get the rest of my writing.
Ryan Douglas Martin resides in a northern suburb of Dallas, TX with his wife Katie and four children Kaisley Grace, Elijah Wyatt, Judah West, and June Selah. He helps operate a family construction company by day. He’s on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and occasionally Facebook. Though he’s probably never had an original thought, he possesses an omnivorous appetite for the insights of teachers much smarter than Him and he enjoys spreading their work widely. He is a Storyteller, and his mission is to help bring value to people by exploring, explaining and building community.
