Set a Job Expiration Date
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by Seth Godin
Remember when you were completing your A Levels? You and everyone else in your class knew when results day was. You had to make plans. You needed to find a job, get into college or university, or even join the Army. There was a deadline.
A deadline sharpens the mind, gets you motivated, and most of all, is clear and obvious. You either make a deadline or you miss it. The kids in your class who screwed around and wasted their final year were pretty obvious when results day rolled around. They were the ones who blew it. They missed the deadline.
Today, though, you've got a job with no deadline in sight. You're likely to stay there forever -- that is, until your boss fires you, the company gets in trouble, or you hit a wall in your career and then wait another six months (or a year or a decade) to determine it really is a wall. In other words, you're waiting for someone else to decide how long you're going to stay.
There's a reason for this, but it's not completely obvious. Ever since the late 1800s, companies have been organised around the idea of the factory. They have machines that make stuff as reliably and cheaply as possible, and they have people to man the machines as reliably and cheaply as possible. Even companies that don't have a physical factory have this mind-set. Hollywood studios, chiropractic offices and software companies all have organisational charts, titles and slots. And the mind-set of the person who owns the factory is simple: Once I find someone good enough to fill a slot, I want him to stay, quietly, forever. Replacing that person is risky and expensive.
So our parents grew up with this, and we were taught it in school and read about it in books -- loyalty, stability and “Leave It to Beaver.”
