Julia Yates explored the role of the unconscious brain in career decision-making during the 2015 London Naturejobs Career Expo.
Read more about Julia’s talk, Career decisions: Too complex for the rational brain, on the Naturejobs blog.
Tag Archives: decision making
Career decisions: Too complex for the rational brain?
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Combining our rational thought process and gut instinct may give us the best of both worlds, says Julia Yates at the 2015 Naturejobs Career Expo in London.
Guest contributor Catherine Seed
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Deciding on our next career move is a struggle over which many of us have lost sleep. Whether we stay within academia or decide to start looking beyond the ivory tower, there are many paths to choose from. Conventional wisdom stresses the importance of logically thinking through the decision and weighing the available options before we decide. After all, career decisions are life changing: it is important to take time and care in making them, isn’t it? Well, maybe not. This rational approach may leave us unhappier in the long term, argues Julia Yates, a psychologist and career coach at the University of East London, UK.
While the idea of keeping career options open has traction, the reality is that there are more options than we can properly evaluate. “Actually, our brains can cope with about six,” Yates said. She noted that the UK Office of National Statistics recently catalogued some 37,000 available job titles, far more than can be rationally assimilated at once. Continue reading
Career A or B: Making the decision
Collect data on yourself before choosing a career.
Contributor Thi Nguyen
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In working with graduate students and postdocs who are choosing between two possible career paths, one ironic challenge we discuss is how their rigorous training has prepared them to perform well in a wide range of fields. PhDs problem solve, think critically, synthesize and present information, analyze data, write technically and creatively, and work independently and in teams. But I remind them using a baseball analogy, that just because they can throw and catch a ball doesn’t mean that they will be as happy, or skilled at, playing the team’s pitcher as they would be playing second base.
To choose the career path that’s a better fit, it’s essential to spend time making an informed decision. They often need to reframe their “I could do anything” attitude, and ask themselves what they want to do. Continue reading