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Remember when you were graduating from high school? You and everyone else in your class knew when graduation day was. You had to make plans. You needed to find a job, take the SATs, join the Army or get into college. There was a deadline.
A deadline sharpens the mind, gets you motivated and most of all, is clear and obvious. You either make a deadline or you miss it. The kids in your class who screwed around and wasted their senior year were pretty obvious when graduation rolled around. They were the ones who blew it. They missed the deadline.
Today, though, you've got a job with no deadline in sight. You're likely to stay there forever -- that is, until your boss fires you, the company gets in trouble, or you hit a wall in your career and then wait another six months (or a year or a decade) to determine it really is a wall. In other words, you're waiting for someone else to decide how long you're going to stay.
There's a reason for this, but it's not completely obvious. Ever since the late 1800s, companies have been organized around the idea of the factory. They have machines that make stuff as reliably and cheaply as possible, and they have people to man the machines as reliably and cheaply as possible. Even companies that don't have a physical factory have this mind-set. Hollywood studios, chiropractic offices and software companies all have org charts, titles and slots. And the mind-set of the person who owns the factory is simple: Once I find someone good enough to fill a slot, I want him to stay, quietly, forever. Replacing that person is risky and expensive.
So our parents grew up with this, and we were taught it in school and read about it in books -- loyalty, stability and “Leave It to Beaver.”
Decide Your Own Moving Date
Alas, the rules have changed. Factories don't work so well anymore, companies don't keep their end of the bargain -- 10,000 layoffs in one day -- and smart employees should reconsider as well.
When you get a new job, set an expiration date. Maybe it's two years or three years. Whatever. Write it down, and then promise yourself you'll find a new job to take this job's place on that date. When you find the new job, go have a talk with your boss. Explain your desire to make dramatic, nonlinear jumps in your career. Explain you've got this other job that represents the kind of jump you want to make.
If your employer respects big ideas and great people, it will probably find room for you in a different division or at a higher level. If it cannot or will not, you need to take that other job.
I'll make it easy for you. Print this out and write down your expiration date right here: ____________. See, that wasn't so hard. Now stick this in your underwear drawer, and don't forget or get stuck.
[Seth Godin is the best-selling author of Survival Is Not Enough.]