Education

How to work to live, not live to work

How does a graduate go about identifying their physical, personal and professional needs?

Career psychologist Sinéad Brady: 'While our careers are important to our identity, they are just a part of who we are and what we do.' Photograph: Sonja Smith

Peter McGuire
Tue Jun 20 2023 - 00:30

A common question to ask a child: what do you want to be when you grow up?

Or, when we meet an adult: what do you do?

For many people, jobs and careers are how we define ourselves. But it doesn’t have to be this way. For graduates setting off in the world of work, career psychologist Sinéad Brady says that, while our careers are important to our identity, they are just a part of who we are and what we do.

“From the moment we are able to talk, and we’re asked what we want to do, it’s always expected that the answer will be some sort of job title,” Brady says.

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“But your career is not a one-and-done job, and the job you take upon graduation does not have to be what you do for the rest of your life.”

In her new book, Total Reset, Brady has written a manifesto on how to quit living for work and, instead, work to live. It is a clear and compelling read that makes a clear and cogent case for building a career that works for you.

By resetting our relationship with work, she says, we can take back control of not just our careers, but also our lives.

On career tests

Graduates will be familiar with the barrage of tests and assessments designed to help them choose the right career, but Brady advises a pinch of scepticism.

“No assessment can tell you what you will be when you grow up. The Myers-Briggs (personality test), for instance, is about as reliable as a horoscope. You have to learn to understand your interests and what makes you tick, and also understand that your career will be a collection of skills, not the job titles you pick up on the way.”

On the challenges of work and change

“Life is filled with change, but large parts of our lives are also quite liminal, where we exist between two locations or states of being. This liminality applies to careers also, despite a wider social narrative that expects certainty, and so it can feel uncomfortable. When we think of careers, we should ideally be thinking about managing our careers and the changes and transitions that will be involved, but this is not a skill we have always been taught.”

Schools rarely discuss that work can often be a slog, or the idea — popularised in a TikTok meme — that there is no such thing as a “dream job” because we don’t want to “dream of labour”.

In all the conversations about skills, passion and ideal careers, we rarely warn graduates that they may be lying awake worrying about Monday morning, or having to deal with toxic office politics. Or, that they may really enjoy their work but, on some days — maybe they’ve had a difficult break-up, maybe they’ve been up all night with a sick child, or maybe they just had a bad night’s sleep — they’ll be miserable as you struggle with a heavy workload.

Why don’t we talk about this more?

“In school, and throughout our education, we tend to focus on the idea that its function is to find a career that will enable us to occupy a meaningful space in the world of work, but we rarely consider how a job and career, for better or worse, will impact our broader lives,” says Brady.

“Hard work does not always bring success; indeed, if we have not been equipped to cope, it can bring poor health. Once we find a workplace and make a job decision, we are rarely taught about how to develop, design and manage our careers as a part of our identities — and how to control it ourselves.”

“Your jobs and functions will likely change,” she says. “You may take periods of time outside the workplace to travel, to mind your mental health, to work in a job that you don’t see as part of your career plan but just to get money. These are all okay.”

On a sustainable career

“A sustainable career means that what you do today will not prevent you from working into the future or working so hard in your 20s that you’re burned out by your 30s and 40s. You can build your life according to your physical, personal and professional needs, and you should do it in that order, and these should be non-negotiables.”

But how does a graduate go about identifying those needs?

“Your physical needs: sleep, nourishment, exercise, time with people that make you smile, including yourself. If work is usurping these, you need to pause and reflect.

“Your personal needs: time for rest and recreation, time for hobbies and interests, time for the tasks you need to do, time for meditation, spirituality and/or religion. What do you need to keep a roof above your head and food on the table? Can you save a certain amount so that, if made redundant, you have six months of bills covered? It also covers your geographic location: are you willing to travel for work and, if so, how far? Do you want to be headquartered outside Dublin with opportunities for work and travel in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) countries? Do you want to work in the US? Or do you want to be fully remote in, for instance, Connemara? Does geography influence your financial non-negotiables on what you want to earn and how much you want to save?”

When it comes to professional needs, Brady says that they may be very different in 10 years’ time than they are for a graduate setting off today and that your definition of success may change as your career progresses.

“Do you want to be in a job as a graduate where you gain experience in certain areas with a big firm, or do you want to be in a smaller organisation where you may have more access to the leadership team and may learn more?”

On men and women in the workplace

Brady says that female graduates tend to surge ahead in their careers after graduation, but that they suffer a “motherhood penalty” if they take time for maternity leave or caring, which leads to lower wages and a lack of equal opportunities for promotion.

Conversely, fathers experience a “fatherhood premium”, where their pay increases within the first year of their child being born. Many fathers really want to take leave to be with their families, but feel they can’t, and Brady says this means that men also suffer from this inequality.

This is a cause of the gender pay gap, and a gap in the number of women represented at senior levels in organisations — and it is, Brady says, a systemic issue caused, at least in part, by companies basing performance reviews on the previous six months, even where someone was out of the workplace during that time — such as on maternity leave.

“These decisions should be made around potential, rather than immediate past performance,” says Brady.

While Brady says that it is incumbent on everyone to ensure representation at the leadership table, and she strongly advocates for change, there are ways for individual graduates and other workers to see how an organisation treats women.

“Gender pay-gap reporting can be a useful metric. But even better — look at an organisation and see who is at their leadership table and then make your decisions.”

On getting support — and knowing how to negotiate

Brady says that meritocracy is a comforting idea, but that it’s a myth, and people without family wealth are often at a disadvantage.

“We are all in the same storm, but not in the same boat, so you need to know your non-negotiables and what you need. You can feel like a fish out of water, but there is nothing wrong with you.

“It can really help to know how to negotiate. Seek out a mentor at the outset, because people are kind and they will mentor you around pay and negotiations.”

Any skill that you build will remain with you for life, so you are not “stuck” with any decision you make now.

“Being okay with change is a part of your career. If you can get to a place where 80 per cent of what you do at work is enjoyable and 20 per cent feels hard, that’s all right,” says Brady.

  • Total Reset: Quit living to work and start working to live, by Sinéad Brady, is available from bookshops, online, and on Audible
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