Breaking the binary: How context shifts students from panic to possibility
I work mainly with high school students and youth who have withdrawn from post-secondary studies, and I routinely encounter absolutes just like the ones I once believed myself. I refer to them as “binary thinking,” because it usually sounds like there are only two options: getting it perfect, or complete and utter failure at everything in life. Nothing exists in between the two.
Here are a few common examples:
- “If I don’t study _____ program at _____ university, I won’t be able to be a _____.”
- “I don’t know what my passion is, what do I do?”
- “All my friends have a plan and I’m the only one who doesn’t.”
- “I like subjects _____ and _____, so the obvious career choice is a _____.”
This article is the first in a CareerWise series on “Teen Career Decision Making.” Watch for more on CareerWise in the days to come, or subscribe to our CareerWise Weekly newsletter to receive the special themed issue.
Accelerating the problem
There are a few other things going on for younger career explorers that exacerbate the problem of binary thinking. One, teens and early 20-somethings have immature brains that aren’t great at abstract thinking, but excel at catastrophizing. Two, they lack work and life experience that would provide a fuller understanding of the nuances and iterations that can go into building a career. And three, they rely heavily on advice and guidance from people who have zero expertise in career development – namely, their parents/guardians, their teachers and their friends.
If people ever realize that many small decisions and everyday influences make or break their work lives, the moment doesn’t often come until mid-career. They may realize after a couple of lateral moves that career choices aren’t just about following their best subject in high school and then getting hired by a top company and working their way up the corporate ladder. They notice that the people in their lives, where they live and how they live all impact the choices they’ve made about work. They might even recognize that socioeconomic status, skin colour, gender identity and expression, and heritage all contribute to career decision-making.
For many people in this world, it took a pandemic for them to sit up and take notice of those things.
“They rely heavily on advice and guidance from people who have zero expertise in career development …”
Given that, it’s perhaps not a surprise that our kids get stuck in a space where they think their choices have to be perfect – or they will fail at everything. We don’t give them much context, because we don’t necessarily have it ourselves.
Breaking the binary
Let’s look at those earlier statements again and add some of that context.
“If I don’t study _____ program at _____ university, I won’t be able to be a _____.”
My thought on this is always, if no one gets hired from other programs and/or other schools, why do they exist? A quick look into labour market stats, graduate employment rates and pathway agreements between schools would bust this one open pretty quickly. This belief is almost always about university. College and apprenticeships are far too ignored as viable options.
“I don’t know what my passion is, what do I do?”
Passion is overrated. It is an absolute must to not hate your work, but passion is not a required ingredient in a successful career. A better approach is to think about how you can create meaning in your work – whatever that means to you. How can you work in a way that helps you create meaning for your co-workers, your clients or customers, your family, your community or someone else? That is what leads to job satisfaction – not passion.
“All my friends have a plan and I’m the only one who doesn’t.”
The assumption here is that friends’ plans a) will never change, and b) will work out exactly the way they expect. A great way to counteract this is to talk about times when something didn’t quite work out, but you like where you ended up anyway, or when where you ended up has worked out reasonably well.
“I like subjects _____ and _____, so the obvious career choice is a _____.”
The way technology and the economy are changing, it doesn’t make any sense to base career choices solely on what is currently available and aligned with academic interests. Not all academic disciplines align to paid work, either. That’s where it can be helpful to have conversations about what youth like about those disciplines. Is it the subject matter? Is it the type of assignments they do? Is it the teacher they have? Those details say a lot about what kinds of work they will enjoy or what kinds of organizations they might thrive in.
As career development professionals, educators and parents, we have an enormous amount of power to break binary thinking in the youth around us. It may feel like an uphill battle for anyone who lives or works with teenagers, but they are listening. What might not work is direct lecturing, especially from a parent. But the more that adults around them share their own career journeys and insights in a casual and conversational way, the more perspectives youth can get.
Additionally, while sharing life experience can be a great tool, good old-fashioned fact-finding often goes even further. My younger clients are astounded at what they discover from data and from a few strategic conversations with people working in careers that pique their interest. What many of them come to realize is that as long as they are contributing positively to their communities and living life on their terms, the type of work they do is secondary.
