13 April 2022
This blog can be read alone or alongside an earlier blog, Fear of Decision-Making (27 October 2021). The main thinker behind the earlier blog was psychologist, John Krumboltz (1928-2019). The main premise uniting this blog and Fear of Decision-Making is that career issues are life issues.
Krumboltz argued that one’s career development is a lifelong process. I am intrigued by his use of the word process. A process is a “...system of operations in the production of something” (Morris, 1975, p. 1043). That definition provides four keys to better understanding: 1) What is the system and of what does it consist? 2) What are the operations within that system? 3) How does production occur? and 4) What is the something produced by this system?
A few points about Krumboltz’s ideas will make the answers more relevant. Krumboltz et al. (2013) maintained that exclusive career counselling—that is, counselling about jobs and job opportunities, resumes, interviewing etc.—may fail because it fails to deal with the discouragement or depression suffered by many jobseekers. That discouragement and depression can and has derailed many job searches that might have been more fruitful had the counsellor defined the goal of counselling as helping clients to create satisfying lives (p. 16). That’s the first goal of what Krumboltz, in 2009, described as HLT or the happenstance learning theory. Krumboltz expanded on this point by suggesting that fostering resilience and adaptability are skills that can make a client more adroit and able to flow with life for the remainder of her days.
His second point was that matching personal attributes to occupational attributes ought be secondary to understanding how that client’s “interests, abilities, beliefs, and personal preferences” (Krumboltz et al. 2013, p. 16) are evolving as his life unfolds.
The third goal is probably the one that most distinguishes Krumboltz from others. He suggested that clients should focus on action—physically and socially doing things of an exploratory nature as a means of creating “beneficial unplanned events” (p. 16). This is interesting because it gets people away from their computers, out in the world, and increases connection—the opposite of addiction. The fourth point provided a standard of value for the others: success is measured by the client’s accomplishments in the real world” (p. 17).
With Krumboltz’s four points stated, let’s return to the definition of process. 1) What is the system and of what does it consist? The system under discussion is the forward movement of a human life. As stated in Resilience #5 (3 June 2020), as an Aristotelian, one accepts that lives are in constant motion; that life is motion. As such, like vectors in physics, each life, at any moment, has direction and magnitude e.g., moving upward slowly or moving downward in a flash. Life nor lives stand still. As such, the system under exploration is the trajectory and engine of a human life. That system consists of choices based on semi-random or consciously chosen values. Successfully adding resilience to that system is like adding shock absorbers to a car—there is a significant increase in lifespan and comfort.
2) What are the operations within that system? Choice making, voluntary exploration, and intelligent responsiveness are the operations visible in this system of forward movement. If we do not make conscious choices, we drift along based on whatever ideas we passively, unquestioningly accept (cf. Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.) As before, free will—agency—is as much a choice about accepting our volitional capacity as it is about which choices we make. Once we accept that we are driving our lives in the direction and speed we choose, what remains is aesthetic. What the forces of 21st-century social media drive us toward is selecting the aesthetic values ahead—and in oblivion of—consciously chosen, value-based direction. As such, a fancy watch denotes a successful life. Tosh, gibberish, & nonsense!
3) How does production occur? Through action. And this is, in my view, Krumboltz’s most valuable contribution: being in the game, being out in the world, increases your odds of involvement, connection, and, as he called it, happenstance. If you sit at your desk wondering why things are not going the way you want, if you refuse to vary your routines, you are not nearly as engaged in the production of your life’s story as you might be. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Production of a good life occurs through acting on chosen values with resilience and as much optimism as we can muster.
4) What is the something produced by this system? Under the conditions explicated above, a chosen life in pursuit of chosen values pursued with optimism. If I saw that cut into a tombstone, I’d salute a life well lived.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understandings of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.
References
Krumboltz, J. D., Foley, P. F., & Cotter, E. W. (2013). Applying the happenstance learning theory to involuntary career transitions. The Career Development Quarterly, Vol 61.
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage illustrated dictionary of the English language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
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