Week Five Discussion: Career and Identity
When I think about turning points in my career, I think about three major moments along the way, each of which I vividly remember. There’s the moment where the phone rang in London and the offer of moving to America came in. The moment I had to stop working because of a cancer diagnosis. And the moment I decided enough was enough and I needed to quit and take a break to look after myself. So the first was a moment of complete euphoria, and at 27 and free of any material life commitments yet, probably naive enough to just embrace the opportunity without really thinking about it too much. The second was a moment where my body gave up and said stop working, but where I also saw the kindness of what it really meant to be a great manager. The third was a similar moment where my brain said the same thing in order to protect itself, and forced me to take a much needed pause from working, but also jump into the culturally uncomfortable space of choosing not to work.
On reflection, quitting a job that was swiftly killing me, and taking a three month timeout was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my career. It allowed me to pause, reflect, and really reshape what I wanted to do. In that space I built an archive of all my work so far in my career, which is still a great thing to have out there. And most importantly, it allowed me to really see what I didn’t want to do any more. It’s a hard thing to do, but it’s empowered me to realize that I could do it again and be just fine.
Over time, my career decisions have often been abut advancement. More responsibility. Bigger projects. Bigger teams. And larger portfolios. Working for well-known companies like The New York Times. And for the most part it’s an approach which has served me well. But over the past five years at NBC, this has changed a lot. I still have a large amount of responsibility across all of the NBC news brands, but I am no longer actively pursuing advancement. I don’t want my boss’ job, and I’ve reached a place of peace where I’m well compensated, enjoy who I work with, and have a tremendous amount of space to indulge what I really want to do, like being at Penn. I still have stressful work days of course, but they are rarer and rarer. I’ve just gotten to a place where my ambition and energy has become extracurricular to the work that pays the bills.
And very often work has defined me. When introducing myself I’d say ‘I’m Matt, and I work for NBC’. But work no longer exclusively defines me. It’s something which takes up space in my life, but it isn’t my life. My life is about being a dad, a husband, a student, a Cleveland Browns fan, a metalhead, a sushi lover, and so much more. I’m much more defined by what isn’t work. And it’s that place where my career path going forward exists to enable all the things I want to do outside of paid work. And it’s this outside work which defines me a lot more than wha pays the bills. Being a dad is way more important than being a vice president. It wasn’t always like this, but now it feels much better that it is.
Along the way I’ve learned a lot, mainly from developing the scar issue of making many, many mistakes. But in thinking about future paths, there’s a few things I know. I know that if you work hard, and you’re kind, amazing things can happen. I know that the ability to do what you’re saying you’re going to do can go a long way. I know that being able to figure things out for others is invaluable. I know that asking ‘what more can I do to help?’ is something people remember. And I know that realizing that your job does not define you takes a long time to understand, but can be very powerful.
