Why Do We Have a Drive and Need for Personal Mission?

It’s not a secret that both the Millennials and the Z-generation are vision- or mission-oriented. Young people are no longer looking only for a paycheck in their jobs. They also want a broader purpose (or, from Japanese, ikigai).

According to Kono and Walker (2020), ikigai is a sense of a life worth living. It emerges from feeling both engaged in something meaningful and connected to others. It is increasingly studied as a driver of motivation among young people (Kono & Walker, 2020).

This can have really interesting long-term consequences for the job market. In particular, it can be predicted that one new type of job is going to emerge soon.

Firstly, how does helping PhDs in developing new careers looks like? One starts from writing books, and then organizing courses for PhD graduates looking for jobs on the open job market. One task leads to another, and the scope of your actions grows. 

Universities start ordering your services as a speaker. They also hire you as an external, private career advisor in cases when some of their research employees need to quickly transition to industry.

The point is, when you dedicate yourself solve a particular problem, you can’t stop the ball from rolling. Sooner or later, you will end up juggling twenty different roles to tackle the same problem from different angles. Roles that were traditionally seen as separate professions.

And if you need to learn one more skill and take one more role for your goal, so be it! Even if you never imagined you would ever take it.

How Will Personal Mission Define The Jobs of the Future?

Therefore, jobs of the future will probably be more fluid: less defined by the activity that you are doing. Examples include: data scientist = a person who analyzes data, politician = a person who proposes and passes bills in the government, author = person who writes books. Instead, jobs will be defined more by the problem you are solving.

According to Hall (1996), careers are increasingly “protean”. They are driven by the person’s own values and sense of purpose rather than by a fixed organizational ladder. Success is redefined as psychological fulfillment instead of a single job title (Hall, 1996).

You will become an expert on topic XYZ (or, be oriented at solving the problem XYZ). You do so by taking a wide range of actions to solve this particular problem. These actions traditionally belonged to separate professions, for instance, research, lobbying in the parliament, public speaking, writing books, teaching, developing commercial products for consumers and/or businesses, etc.

I would compare the difference between developing the “traditional”, specialistic careers and being a “problem solver” to the difference between being a speed-runner and a chess player. In running, the point is to get towards the target in the straight line and to make consequent and well-defined steps as fast as possible.

For instance, if you want to become the top Data Scientist, you need to learn statistics, and learn about the data science and machine learning tools. Then, you pick data science jobs and collect a portfolio of completed projects. And always aim at the more challenging, complex, and prestigious project than the projects you had before.

Then, you get orders from some good-brand companies. And together with your portfolio and experience, your network and your earnings will steadily grow.

What Happens as You Build Momentum?

The faster you complete your projects, the better for you. And the faster you will get to the higher price range for your services.

However, what happens when you, for instance, decide to solve some societal problem instead. As an example, let’s say, improve the situation of single mothers in your country? 

You probably realize there is a problem based on personal encounters with single mothers who tell you about their situation. So, you do some field research, reach out to more single mothers, and try to estimate how big this problem is. 

Then, if you are a researcher with access to some public funds, you might think of more systematic studies. Next, you start some online activities to raise awareness of this topic: blogging, tweeting, writing articles on Medium or LinkedIn. 

How Can You Establish Yourself Publicly?

You might also write a book after you analyze the problem throughout. You try to find people who think alike, and who are interested in solving the same problem. 

You might present at some conferences, and meetups to bring more awareness to the issue. You might even get invited to speak about the problem in the government if you meet the right people. 

From this point, you can develop in different directions. Perhaps, you create some (online) educational program for single mothers or collaborate with the official authorities to write a new bill offering new tax reductions, subsidies, or an extra budget for education. 

Or, perhaps, other people invite you to participate in their initiatives. You might find yourself learning new skills every day, juggling ten different activities traditionally seen as separate professions within one year. You take detours and career moves that you would not be able to predict a few months or even a few weeks before. 

Before making every move sideways, you need to think and evaluate whether, strategically, this move serves the ultimate purpose. Or, whether it will serve the purpose a few moves ahead.

Is a Mission-Driven Path For Everyone?

To do this type of job, you need to be a generalist who easily crosses the boundaries between different environments, easily finds their way with people, and quickly adapts. Such a person can draw conclusions based on noisy or incomplete information. 

The number of mindful individuals who fit this profile is steadily increasing. They usually have a difficult start though.

Let’s imagine that you are a type of protagonist or a problem-solver in some area. It is difficult to get noticed among all those people who just produce noise and confusion by launching a lot of empty projects and burning the public money just to “raise awareness about a problem.” 

But sooner or later, you will make it through especially if you find some soulmates and build a mastermind group together with some other protagonists.