Letting Go of Your Work

by Nicole C. Tedesco

During the Industrial and Agricultural eras, individuals became comfortable becoming their work.

I am a doctor.

I am a lawyer.

I am a farmer.

Many inventors whose identity is "inventor" often end up wrapping their identity in their favorite invention. It is becoming increasingly apparent however that strong vocational identity may be counter-productive to financial survival in the maturing Information era.

The strength of vocational identity in the Industrial era and its impact on self-efficacy and self-esteem in western countries has been well documented and analyzed (e.g., Richardson , 2005[i]). The strength of this sentiment, the degree of importance of the vocation-role to the modern adult, was expressed even in terms of its effects on human sexuality by Ayn Rand , in her 1964 Playboy interview with Alvin Toffler ,

The only man capable of experiencing a profound romantic love is the man driven by passion for his work -- because love is an expression of self-esteem, of the deepest values in a man's or a woman's character.[ii]

In the maturing Information era however, this self-identity is increasingly challenged by instabilities in once easily identifiable “careers”, professions, crafts and other vocation-roles. Problems arise however from the process “…disengagement…from the role and the cultural context and web of relationships within which the role is embedded.” (Ashforth, 2010[iii]). People typically react to role exit with a sense of termination or failure of one’s past, followed by disappointment and self-doubt. Of course these emotions are added to the fears, anxieties and stress that will naturally accompany the financial uncertainty accompanying the loss of any paying job.

No healthy person wishes to lose their job, let alone realize that their participation in a role—a career—may have come to an end. The impact of such an event however can leave a person in disarray for years,

In most cases, the process of comparing a current role with role options took place in a vague and off-and-on way over a period of years until the pressures mounted or events occurred which significantly altered the perceived advantages or disadvantages of either the current or the alternative role.[iv]

In a world where the possibility of vocation dissolution is increasingly likely, it is obviously not desirable to suffer the increasing possibility of wasting increasing numbers of our precious years absorbing these insults to our psyches. We must, therefore, be increasingly prepared to face career dissolution, loss of vocation and the self-identity challenges that come with this phenomenon.

My personal experiences hint at a related phenomenon associated with the inventor assuming the identity of their favorite or salient invention.

I am my new mousetrap.

I am my new software application.

I am my new widget.

I believe that inventors who do not have an expectation of ownership of their intellectual property, such as employees who sign their invention rights away to their employers, may not often experience this problem. However, those that expect to make a business of their invention may find themselves in one of several intellectual and emotional traps that can thwart investment and partnership opportunities by insisting on:

· Zealous secrecy

· Maintaining complete ownership

· Managing every detail of development, marketing, quality, customer service and so on (micromanaging)

· Failure to adapt their invention to changes in the competitive landscape (e.g., react to similar inventions)

Our future very likely consists of an increasingly rapid pace of innovation in all fields of human endeavor. Those infected with invention-as-identity however, are probably increasingly exposed to those kinds of effects from the increasing pace of innovation which they themselves are engaging in. Some of those effects may also be similar to the effects on those who have lost their career; what happens to the inventor who, after years of hard work, finds a competitor who has already “beat them to the punch” and produced a finished product before them? What will happen to inventors as this phenomenon is increasingly likely to occur?

To effectively survive the maturing Information era, we must learn to let go of our work. How are workers, professionals and inventors to do this? How do we all keep from wasting precious years of our lives and frustrating ourselves in order to try to hold on to what cannot be held on to?

Ashforth provides some hints at effective coping mechanisms for those whose careers have dissolved, either by choice or otherwise:

· Social validation. Objective review of one’s status and options are important in helping to recover from shocks as rapidly as possible. I also suggest maintaining an understanding of the increased likelihood of career transition, and the reasons for it, amongst one’s peer group in order to aid in the avoidance of surprise and even other social effects such as shame.

· Role rehearsal. Anticipate a new identity, such as taking night courses in anticipation of full time retraining or volunteer in new positions of interest.

· Interact with new role models and peer groups. Learn what it means to be “someone else”.

· Acceptance. Ashforth describes individual differences in identity resolution capabilities. My suggestion in this regard is to practice, practice, practice thinking like and becoming something different. I also suggest generalizing one’s vocation-role; instead of, for instance, considering one’s self a “doctor” or “nurse” consider one’s self instead to be a “healer” or as someone who provides health products or services. This will cast the widest possible net across possible identities.

· Rituals. Adopt ritualistic “rights of passage” to mark separation from a career. The sooner that one understands that the past is past, the faster the future can be met.

· Opportunity for change. Understand career loss as an opportunity to learn new things, do new things and an opportunity to change things in one’s life that one did not have time to change previously.

I also recommend:

· Minimize financial and emotional risks. Try to keep a year’s worth of cash in your bank account. Try to minimize mortgage payments. Keep the number of “things” in your house and life to a minimum, or at least always be prepared to jettison the unnecessary in rough times. Understand your true priorities in life. Rent instead of lease or buy. Understand and internalize concepts of “transience”. Do not do this alone, but also involve your family and peers.

· Maintain social connections with those already “out”. You may be “out” someday. “Pay it forward” by understanding that those no longer in your work circle are still valuable sources of information and other resources for you now in your current job and in the future when you are in the same position as they are. There was a reason you worked together once, so there is no reason you will never work together again in the future. (Do this even if the person leaving did so voluntarily.)

These coping mechanisms also translate effectively to the inventor’s problems as discussed previously by understanding the term “invention” as a specific substitution for the word, “role”. (In fact, the inventor probably assumed the role of “inventor” initially and then focused their identity on their specialty, or “inventor of X”.) To the extent that an inventor can translate their identity from one invention to the next (assuming they are efficiently creative) or translate to a non-inventor role, the inventor is more likely to survive the turmoil in tomorrow’s increasingly dynamic marketplace for innovation.

Some of us may be good at this “vocation transition” process, but I suspect that many of us may not be, even into the future where the phenomenon becomes more widespread and training on how to handle these life changes is pushed through our society. Will future productivity in our society be increasingly divided between those few who can cope and the majority who cannot? Can such a society sustain itself?

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[i] Mary Sue Richardson , Kesia Constantine , and Mara Washburn, "3 New Directions for Theory Development in Vocational Psychology," Handbook of Vocational Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice, ed. W. Bruce Walsh and Mark L. Savickas , 3rd ed. ( Mahwah , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005) 51, Questia, Web, 25 Sept. 2010.

[ii] Alvin Toffler , “Playboy Interview: Ayn Rand ,” Playboy, March 1964, Web, 25 September 2010
href="http://www.playboy.com/articles/ayn-rand-playboy-interview/" title="Playboy Online">http://www.playboy.com/articles/ayn-rand-playboy-interview/

[iii] Blake E. Ashforth , “Role Transitions in Organizational Life: An Identity-Based Perspective” ( Mahwah , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001) 53, Questia, Web, 25 September 2010

[iv] Ebaugh, H.R.F., “Becoming an ex: The process of role exit,” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)