#8216;There#8217;s Always a Reason to Be Scared#8217; Using Fear to Achieve Your #8216;Quarter-Life Breakthrough#8217;

8216There8217s Always a Reason to Be Scared8217 Using Fear to Achieve Your 8216Quarter-Life Breakthrough8217 As a 20-something myself, I can confirm that the quarter-life crisis is a very real phenomenon. It often departures with the nagging suspicion that your life isnt going the way you had planned and sometimes it can end in total self-destruction.Thankfully, that hasnt happened to me and it probably wont happen to you, either, if you pick up a copy of Adam Smiley PoswolskyThe Quarter-Life Breakthrough, a new career guide specifically for 20- and 30-somethings looking formore meaningful work, out this week from TarcherPerigee.Smiley says the book was born from his own quarter-life crisis, which he underwent while working for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C. To everyone else, Smiley seemed like the picture of success and yet, something was missing from his life.If I wasnt happy at the Peace Corps, where the hell would I besatisfied working? he musesin the books introduction.Eventually, Smiley quit his job and moved to San Franciscoto become a writer and you can see that worked out pretty well for him.But thats elend to say the advice contained in The Quarter-Life Breakthroughamounts to the same old follow your dreams platitudes that plague other career guides. Instead, Smiley draws on his own experience as well as the experiences of hundreds of other young people whom he interviewed over the years to craft a book that skips the vague slogans in favor of an actionable plan.This is a guide for people figuring out what to do next with their lives an unconventional career guide to help you figure out what you want to do, how you can give back, and how you can make an impact in the world, Smiley says.Last week, Smiley and I hopped on a phone call to discuss his book. Below is a transcript of our conversation, minimally edited for style and clarityRecruiter.comThis book is clearly targeted toward young people and their cha llenges. Aside from age, is there a difference between the quarter-life crisis and the mid-life crisis?Adam Smiley PoswolskyTo be perfectly honest, I think the principles in the book of finding meaningful work apply to people of all generations. However, I didnt think it was appropriate necessarily as a 30-year-old to be giving advice to someone who is twice my age.Its a matter of my voice and my resonance. I think my voice resonates more strongly with people who areat a similar stage in life.I self-published a version of this book two years ago, and Ive had a lot of people who are dealing with mid-life crises or switching careers at the age of 48 or 54 say, Hey, this book really helped me. But I think that if I had just called it The Breakthroughor whatever, it would loseits direct resonance.They always say you should write what you know, and this is what I know. I dont know what its like to have two kids and a mortgage.Ive never been married. Those things add another layer to how you build a meaningful life. Because I havent experienced those things, I didnt think it was appropriate to talk about them.I definitely want to write The Mid-Life Breakthrough at some point just give it 10 or 15 years.I also think, when youre at this stage in life, the stakes are lower. Well, in one way, the stakes are higher because youre setting yourself up for what you do in the future. But you can take more risks. You can leave a job thats not working, even if it might be a financial risk for six months. You dont have two kids to feed, and youre probably renting an apartment, so theres a little more leeway there in terms of inventing your own path. If you are 10, 15, or 20 years older, its still possible to do that but there are more things to consider.RCIn the book, you talk about climbing the career ladder vs. jumping lily pads. Can you elaborate on what that means, exactly?ASPWe have a career mindset that has not caught up with the current realities of the job market. This idea of the career ladder is an antiquated notion. It was applicable to the baby boomer generation, that idea of going to college, picking a major, getting a job out of college that reflects something you studied, and getting on that ladder at 20or 21and moving up the ladder throughout your career until retirement.If you look at a lot of peoples career paths now, they dont follow this linear path, especially in the last ten years, with the recession, rapid changes in technology, an increasingly freelance- and flexible-job-oriented market, andshorterjob tenures. We need a mindset that embraces this instability and provides a more flexible and experimental notion of what a career can be.I think people talk about this, and you read about it in places like Fast Company, but they dont tell college students about it. The career advisors dont say, Hey, you need to prepare for your next 15 jobs, not yourfirst job. You cant just focus on that first job.Even if its great, its probably only go ing to last for two or three years, statistically speaking.I think the much more empowering way of looking at your career is the lily pad metaphor. If you think about lily pads, you can go in any direction. Theyre all connected the roots of the lily pads are connected by what is meaningful to you so while the surface of what youre doing might look different, you can move in all these directions to find work that means something to you.Like for me, I wentfrom working at the Peace Corps in D.C. to moving to San Francisco and becoming a writer. It looks different, but I could make that jump because it was something meaningful and it excited me.Sometimes, young people hear this metaphor and think, Great Im going to quit my job and moveto Thailand because Smiley told me to jump lily pads That might be what our hearts want to hear, but Im very serious about this in the book. This is about finding meaningful work, not taking a meaningful vacation. Just because you can hop lily pads and mig ht have to because of the current job market and economy, that doesnt mean you make reckless decisions. It doesnt mean you dont think strategically about what youre building toward.One of the things that has influenced my thinking about this is technology. If you think about rapid prototyping or how products are launched today where they do things like A/B testing and such this is how we should approach our careers, too. We have to think about what works for us without taking 20 or 30 years to do so. Instead, we should be looking at six-month or three-month internships, apprenticeships, jobs, gigs, freelance opportunities, consulting opportunities, whatever. We need to say, Hey, Im thinking about this job. I wonder if they could bring me on for a short-term project to see if I really like it and they like me.You see a lot of companies starting to do this now withrotational programs to see whether aperson actually fits in the company. The only way to know that for is to get the on- the- ground experience.RCYou also talk about the importance of embracing fear in order to find meaningful work. Obviously, we dont usually look at fear as a positive thing. Why is fear important to having a quarter-life breakthrough?Adam Smiley PoswolskyASPIm someone who has a lot of fears. I know that if youre constantly using fear as a red light, you wont do anything. Theres always something to be scared of. One of the things I realized when I started to put my writing out there wasthat if Imscared of publishing a piece, theres probably a reason for that and maybe the reason is because its something Iactually need to do.I think its really important to use fear to take action. I have a section in the book about taking yourfears and turning them into research. Were all scared of things scared of publishing a book, or starting a business, or working on a new project, or changing fields. You can just tell your friends youre scared, or you can take the action steps to gain more knowl edge in that area and be less scared.If you say, Im not qualified for this role while, are you actually not qualified? Did you do the research? Did you find out that a position requires skills you dont have? Okay, so youre not qualified yet. Now, how doyou get those skills?Often, this leads to these baby steps that help you embrace your fear and move toward meaningful work, like reading a book, taking a class, setting up coffee dates, doing more research, or volunteering.RCChapter six is about the infinite paths to meaningful work. For some people even myself that might sound kind of paralyzing, having all those options. How do you see it? Is this an empowering idea to you?ASP This is really important. Its a very honest and truthful section of the book for me. All too often, if youre in the career advice or coaching space like I am, you hear things like,Do what you love Follow your passion Start your own business It all boils down to Quit your awful job and live the dreamBut if y ou actually interview people and I interviewed hundreds of people for this book over the past four years you find that this narrative is only truthful in one or two cases. The majority of cases are completely in between. Whats more likely is you have someone who wants to quit their job, but instead they start a blog on the side about something theyre interested in. Then, in eight months, they actually start a business because they needed to save some money first, or gain some experience, or maybe they just liked certain aspects of their day job.I think entrepreneurship is a great path for people, but its not for everyone. Working for yourself is really hard. Sometimes, you can have more of an impact if you work for another company that is more established and has more resources. I wanted that truth and those narratives to be told. I know it can be intimidating to read that section. You might think, I thought I was just supposed to discover what was meaningful to me and then do it But the way it looks in practice is that there are so many possibilities.This is really how thelily pad metaphor comes to fruition, because you realize, Woah, I can do meaningful work in this area in seven different ways. I can start my own business, or I can work for a tiny startup, or I can split my time between freelancing and another job.Its a little intimidating, but its truthful. This is the reality of the current job market. There is no single right answer for how to find meaningful work, and any books that say there is great, good for them, but I disagree. Even if you know what is meaningful to you, there are so many ways to go about it. My hope is people will feel inspired and say, Okay, Im going to try one of these paths. It doesnt have to be the be-all and end-all. I think thats an empowering framework.RCWell, Adam, those are the end of my questions but was there anything else you wanted to mention before I let you go?ASP Yes theres one thing that I think is really im portant that a lot of books in the career space dont touch on building a community.Every career books touches on networking. Thats something people are always talking about. But for me, its about community building.I have a section in the book on finding believers, and I truthfully believe the reason that I was able to have my quarter-life breakthrough was because of the people I started to surround myself with. Its not just networkingbeing on LinkedIn, going to conferences, and handing out business cards. Its actually the opposite of that. Its about building deep relationships with people whoshare similar values and interests people who are going to be supportive of you and whom youre going to be supportive of.If the people you are surrounding yourself with arent making you better, arent inspiring you, arent pushing you to reach for your dreams, you need to start finding some new friends. On paper, I was a very successful 28-year-old. I was working for the government in D.C., and I was surrounded by a lot of successful people but I hadnt yet found believers. Its an important contrast. You have friends to watch the game with or have a drink with, but thats different from having believers in your life.It can be incredibly hard for people to find communities of believers outside of major cites, and I wanted to include in the book a resources section that lists some purpose-driven communities, but we didnt have space. I put it online, though, so people can see it there.