Why Juggling's a Good Thing

When I started reading Penelope Trunk's article about "embracing instability" in your career, I thought she was a tad whacked. But she's not. What's she's doing is putting today's tendency to change jobs - or even careers - into a the logical perspective of this century. Her bottom line: The people who are most adept at dealing with transition are the people who will do best in their careers and in their lives.

In particular, this struck me:

Be comfortable with uncertainty. Eve Ensler, author of the play "The Vagina Monologues" and more recently the book "Necessary Targets," thinks one cause of insecurity in our lives is the expectation of being secure. "If you think you'll get to the point that you'll be secure, then you'll be chronically depressed," says Ensler.

Since we can never really be secure, we should instead learn to be comfortable with that. Getting good at dealing with a world that does not provide security is actually a more healthy way to live than trying to find that one, perfect path through life that leads to mythical security.

Ensler's ideas suggest that today's career paths, which wind and stop and turn and surprise us along the way, may be better for us once we get used to not knowing what's ahead. "When you start working with ambiguity and living with it initially, it's scary because there are no signposts. But eventually it seems to be a much more interesting way of living."

Given that CPAs tend to look over the fence at another way of life as the hours mount up, it's an interesting point of view.

The key is to embrace instability [Boston Globe]