There are decisions we take in our life that can cost us either immediately or in the long run. I have experimented a lot with my career and also made decisions and if I look back it has had its impact. I think it would be nice to reflect back. There is a price….

The decision to start my own business immediately after college was a big decision… though I did not feel it that way back then… I was young and had all the time in the world.

I was too immature thrust into a market which was probably not ready for what we had to offer. The immaturity probably caused our failure in scaling what had in a way started off in a good way. Couple that with the lack of knowledge in Finance Management.. the spiral down is fast. I lost 5 years there. Yes I did learn and might have used my learnings in my life… but none of that was really helping when I needed them I guess. And this is my personal reading…

I might be wrong. but the price of 5 years does not really justify that learning. I am not able to really quantify it in real terms.

Though I was equipped with an engineering degree and even did my final projects in C programming, I never took to programming. I did not even attempt to try it. There was some seriously damaging lack of self confidence in me. Should have tried to overcome that. Being in the Tech field for all the while, this act or lack of it there off should have had its high cost on my career.

Staying away from Technology and Management…. thinking it might not be my cup of tea and thinking Sales is the only thing I will ever be good at was the next career mistake. It took me over a decade to find out that I could really manage large engagements and complex projects and had a unique ability to interact and work with people across the aisle.. Things would have been different if I had explored these possibilities earlier. In fact I had even declined when such an opportunity came up for me in 2003. Of the many opportunities I decided to not take in the early part of my career for whatever reasons.

My decision to not enter into Program management in the year 2003 took me into another 7 years of trying to do what I was not good at or had lost aptitude on…. Sales and Entrepreneurship…. I held on there as that is all I knew. It is very difficult to break off from the mould you think is your self…. But the recovery came in 2010… After 17 years of starting my career. What the Heck….

Well, I should not say Sales was the only thing I did till 2003 I spend a year in Resource Management and HR. And I was also able to do that well. But then I left it. Some decisions have no explanations.. no logical explanations at least… I could have build that as a career if I wanted.. Now looking back with the high impact Personal & Professional Development aspects of my current life.

From 2010 to current times was not a smooth sail either. The interesting thing was that I had acquired a lot of skills that were very useful once employed, but not ones that could be projected to gain employment. That can sound weird. But that is how I see it.

We live in a world where we like career paths that are straight lines… straight thick lines and here is a guy whose career is not a line but a mesh or a mess(h) of many lines intersecting and breaking off and curves cutting through each other. Not a pretty scene. I even had one of my managers in a place I contracted say jokingly that my biggest issue was that I was not employable.. Whatever that means….

But then what happened. You need to wait till tomorrow when we will chat on how I tried to recover things post 2010 in my own imperfect way.

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Categories: Career & Work, Enjoying Life and Work

Tags: Career, career decisions, Work