Working life has changed dramatically over the last few decades, and while long careers with the same company may be the exception rather than the rule, it is still a marathon.
Over and above the requirements of employees, which vary greatly with their age - the impetuousness of youth is giving way to a desired form of stability - it is important to think in terms of the medium and long term. In this respect, there is often confusion between thinking in the long term and acting according to this same model.
Today, it is becoming difficult to project oneself into a medium- or long-term perspective, given the fast pace at which the environment, constraints, requirements, and possibilities are changing. This in no way prevents individuals from having a vision of what they want to do or achieve.
Running one sprint after another through one’s professional life can be an extraordinary stimulus, even a form of intellectual appeasement: each stage can be visualised, qualified and quantified. But can we be satisfied with these short-term stages in a professional career?
A professional career is rarely a long, quiet river and is often made up of successes, failures, promotions, and challenges. Is that why we should see the short term as a lifeline to mask the demands of the marathon?
Of course, we need to be able to celebrate successes every time they come along, because they are wonderful milestones in a professional life, but it’s just as important to realise that they are ‘just’ one stage in a logical whole.
Today’s careers are often very fractured and unpredictable. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you need to be particularly well equipped to withstand life’s jolts. Successfully reconciling the short and the long term is often a challenge, requiring a great deal of technical mastery and even resilience.
Our societies have become very demanding, forcing us to always perform, whereas certain operations, projects and successes can only be achieved over the long term: you still need to be able to consider the whole and not the part of the whole.
The demands of the market, of customers, of suppliers, of society in general, have transformed the long-term approach into a constellation of real short-term moves. As a result, the marathon of professional life has been transformed over time into a series of rapid sprints, conducted according to the clock rather than the building blocks of time.
Of course, not all jobs are the same, and although “no job is a foolish job”, some activities are more personally “rewarding” than others. Beyond that, every activity can bring great satisfaction, the key being to be in tune with your long-term professional projection, i.e., your own marathon.
This is strangely reminiscent of the famous metaphor of the traveller passing three workmen, the first unhappy one telling him to break stones, the second telling him to build a wall and the third, happy and laughing, telling him to build a cathedral. And what if professional life was part of this third perspective?
Being able to plan for the long term while still being able to run a few sprints could be the key to a happy and fulfilled working life.
Happy thoughts, happy weeks and see you soon.