Let’s say you get into a great MBA program. You go in with a clear post-MBA goal. Going through the motions of the program you get talking with your peers. Everyone has different goals and different reasons for pursuing them. Most of them are aiming to get into consulting, some want to launch enterprises, others want to go back to their old jobs. There are also subsections of these groups. People who want to get into consulting have many choices. Some are looking into federal consulting while others are focusing on strategy or HR consulting.
There are so many options that it gets you thinking whether your chosen career path is the right one. You are intrigued by all the other options available and start to question your pre-determined game plan.
This scenario is nothing new. Whole books, articles, and studies have been done on this. In 2004, a book by American psychologist Barry Schwartz came out called the “Paradox of Choice – Why Less is More”.
In the book, Schwartz discusses an interesting experiment involving jam. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper displayed 24 kinds of jam in a local market for people to choose from. The next day they displayed only 6 kinds of jam. Surprisingly, people bought more when they had fewer choices. The customers who had 24 choices were one-tenth as likely to buy any jam as the customers who only saw the smaller sample.
Why did increased choice lead to fewer purchases? According to Schwartz, the experiment shows that excessive choice leads to “choice paralysis”. Although choice is good, each additional choice adds less additional benefit and imposes a cost in the form of increased time and effort required to make a decision. When an option is finally selected, increased choice also reduces the satisfaction experienced due to unrealistically high expectations, disappointment, and regret.
This is what you may face while having conversations with your MBA peers. An abundance of career choices leading to questions, uncertainty, and paralysis when it comes to applying for internships.
I faced this situation myself. I didn’t have a clear direction, so I ended confused and scheduled a meeting with the career advisor.
When I explained to her the confusion I was facing, she gave me some unexpected advice. She compared jobs to relationships, by saying that we date to find our partners to marry. If one relationship doesn’t work out, then we break up and look for a new match. That is the way you should approach jobs. Don’t think that just because you start a particular job, you’ll have to keep doing it for the rest of your life. If you like it, you’ll continue with it. If you don’t, you will find a new role. Nothing in life is definitive.
She went on to explain that when we date, we figure out what we like or don’t like in a particular partner. Similarly, when we are working, we figure out our preferences. With each learning experience, we discover more about ourselves.
Sometimes the only way to get the ball rolling is to simply start. You cannot wait for the perfect job opportunity to come along or to have all the answers. Uncertainty will always exist since you are making a choice that affects the future. Your job is to do the best you can with the available information at hand, and the rest will follow.
Hearing this analogy calmed my mind. It made me realize that I don’t need to have everything figured out right away. Whatever internship I would choose to pursue was part of the journey and wouldn’t determine the rest of my career. Likewise, whatever jam the participants of the study chose, they could go back and choose another jam the next time. However, you need to pick a jam. That is the only way to figure out which one you like best.
In life we will face many choices, from the cereal we have in the morning to our jobs and life partners. The current system offers an abundance of choice, often too many, and this can lead to choice paralysis. It is important to take a step back and realize that whatever choice you make, you can always change direction if you don’t like it.
Tringa Krasniqi holds an MBA degree from The George Washington University. She is the founder and consultant at Ivy Journey, an educational consulting firm for gaining admission to universities and winning scholarships.
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