Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective and purpose in their careers. And in today's episode, I want to talk about ways of de-risking your career on your career growth roadmap. And interestingly, the flip side of de-risking also tends to align with career growth. We're going to talk a little bit about how that works. The first thing I want you to do if you're listening to this episode is to either pause it or take a minute after the episode to run through this exercise. It's not very complicated. The exercise is very simple. I want you to think about the things in your life, the people, maybe the situations, maybe the the literal physical things that drive your decision making. Right? So for most people, of course, one of the things on this list is money. But it usually shows up in different ways. Specifically, how would you use the money that you make? How do you currently use it? You can look back and see how you have made decisions around money. What kinds of things are on this list? But secondly, I want you to think about what kinds of things would change your decisions. What situation could occur that would shift your decision making, that would shift your behavior, that would change how you spend your time, maybe it would change how you spend your money. And you develop this list of things that are very powerful and have a lot of leverage over your decision making. This list is very important for you to be aware of. Because while this list is ultimately probably fairly well aligned with things that you value, there are also things on this list that could hold you hostage. Right? And I don't necessarily mean in a hostile way. More, what I mean is, that you could end up making decisions that you otherwise would not have made, had it not been for some aspect, something on this list that kind of pushed you that direction. So basic examples of this might be large amounts of debt. Right? You know, the kind of the positive versions of this might be relationships that you care deeply about, whether that's family or friends, or whatever is on that, you know, on that vertical for you as well. Your personal health. You know, at some point your personal health, you wouldn't have a choice, right? But to be held, you know, essentially hostage. But you could also look at maximizing your personal health. Maybe that's something that you value very, very much. And so that's not necessarily a bad thing to have on this list. But the important thing that you need to recognize here is that when we care very deeply about something, or, you know, when we care, you know, about not losing something, right? Like, for example, if you didn't pay your debts, you may, your credit score may drop. You may lose out on future potential of owning things. You may have something repossessed, your car, your home. These are all nightmare scenarios that are probably for most people on this show, or listening to the show rather, it's unlikely for you, right? But they're not, things that could never happen. In other words, it was kind of a double negative, wasn't it? So it's these, these are situations that could theoretically, if you didn't pay your bills, you could lose your home. You could lose your car. So what this list highlights for you are things that are powerful in your life to you. 00.03.20 And as a general rule, these are the things that you're going to make most of your large decisions around. Whether that's managing your debt, maybe it's aligning your time so that you can spend it with friends. Maybe on this list is something as simple or as critical as the domain that you want to work in. You care very much about working in some kind of domain. And so if your organization, let's say you join, you know, a company and you find out that they're moving away from a particular domain, that may have enough leverage over you, that you decide that you're gonna leave that job, right? So what you want to understand here is that this list, the, the power that these things have, the values kind of cut both ways. And so, it makes sense to de-risk yourself in as many of these areas as possible. How can you gain enough agency over your own decision making so that these areas have less leverage? What would have to be true, for example, for you to not go into the red on your mortgage? And this is the basic de-risking process. Everybody makes different decisions with their money. Everybody makes different decisions with their time, with their careers. And what we're really trying to do is kick off kind of a premortem of career failure. That's really what this exercise is. But it starts with trying to recognize the sources of power in your life. When I say sources of power, I don't mean anything mystical or magical or new age. I mean very simply the things that would have the power to change your decisions. Situational, relational, whatever it is. These are things that have power over your decisions. And so these matter because in order for you to gain as much autonomy as possible, in order to make decisions about your career that you want to make, you need to have a clear awareness of the things that have power over you. Right? And identify the ones that you accept. Right? So, for example, in some of those relationships, part of what keeps the relationship in a positive place, part of the definition of that relationship is vulnerability. And so you're vulnerable because that person has some power over you to change your decision making. If I de-risked my reliance on my relationship with my wife or my children, that would probably create some distance. Right? Because it would eliminate some of the vulnerability that we have with each other. And that's not something that I want to elect to do. But I don't need to be vulnerable with my creditor. Right? I don't really want to have that vulnerability. In fact, as soon as I can close out that relationship, that's what I want to do. So, you know, ways of de-risking those situations create more autonomy and create more opportunity for me to make decisions in my career. That may otherwise feel too risky. Right? I may go and join a company. This is how this ultimately ends up playing out. Right? So let's take credit card debt, for example. Okay? I could either choose to continue on with credit card debt hanging over my head and build that bill up, increase my debt. And ultimately, I'm beholden to paying that debt off. And so therefore, you know, I need to do something. I need to do something. I need to do something. I need to do something. I need to have a job that allows me that I have enough income to pay that debt off. Okay. So that's the basic calculus. Right? And so with that debt, I'm unlikely to take a pay cut to go and work for a company that I may really want to work for, but they just can't quite pay me enough to deal with this other vulnerability. And so my credit card debt has power over my decision making about where I work. Right? So, and this can even be, you know, jobs that pay decently well. So, and this, that's a very common example. Right? So, so instead, what can I do in order to improve my autonomy and ultimately give me more agency in my career and potentially allow me to take more risks in my life? I eliminate other risks. So I may buckle down, you know, save what I need to save in the higher business. Right? Right? Right? Right? I take a better job in order to pay the credit card off entirely. And now that vulnerability is reduced in my life. You know, money isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's as simple as, you know, trying to square with the risk of not paying that debt off. You know, how can I, what happens in my life and am I okay with that? You know, very similarly, we may need to, you know, do some introspection and figure out what I want to do with my life. and figure out how we can relate differently to our job, some of the parts of our job that we previously may have called non-negotiables. Now we adjust our, you know, we do, again, that introspective work to figure out, okay, what is actually important to me here? You know, what are the real risks that I'm trying to mitigate, for example, versus the ones that I'm imagining? Am I creating a problem where there doesn't need to be one? And so if that's the case, then I might be, you know, less likely to leave a job, right? Less likely to leave a company just because of some small failure or some small misalignment. Maybe the leadership at the company, I don't have perfect alignment with their personal values. Can I relate to that situation differently so that I'm not constantly seeking a company where everybody in the company has exactly the same values that I have? Exactly the same belief system that I have. If I can find a way to relate to that differently, then I'm de-risking that, right? I'm taking some power out of that, some power that it otherwise would have had over me. I'm kind of reclaiming that, right? And now I have a little bit more agency to make my own decisions about those situations. So really what you're doing here is you're trying to figure out, okay, what are the things that would change, the way I make decisions, and do I want to keep that vulnerable relationship? Do I really want to be beholden to that particular value set? Do I want that thing to have that power over me? Or do I want to shift it? And if so, what way would I like to shift it? How should I change my relationship to that thing so that I have more agency autonomy? What this ultimately tends to look like and why it usually leads to growth, this usually means that we're trying to take control of certain aspects of our life in a different way. So we give up control in one area and we take control in another area, right? So in the example of the credit card debt, instead of continuing on having debt, then I'm going to take control of my current finances, so that I can pay that debt off. I'm going to try to change my spending habits for some amount of time. I'm adding control in one area and I'm potentially releasing control in another area. So in that example, you might be releasing control over the things that you were able to buy with the credit card. All right, so no longer are you going to have, you know, that much purchasing power. Maybe that behavior has to change. And so it's a control system and you only have so much of that agency. But if you route it to the correct things, then you can de-risk your situation. So you're less likely to feel constrained in your decision-making. And as a general rule, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to feel totally free to make any decision. It also doesn't mean that you're going to end up in a financially bad, better off position. All this really means is that you have more autonomy over your decision-making without violating any of your relational vulnerabilities, right? And so with that autonomy, you may be able to make a more kind of principled decision that aligns with your personal values, your clarity, perspective, and purpose. You're able to get a little bit clearer, right? On what you care about and how you want to operate about what you care about. You're able to have, certainly this is the biggest one, a different perspective, right? If you have a bunch of things that are clouding your decision-making that you feel like you have to respect or that are kind of influencing your decision-making, and your perspective is probably lacking, right? And finally, because of that, because of this change in your clarity and perspective, you're able to more directly align with what you hopefully have identified as a purpose-driven approach to your career. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. It's kind of a different discussion about values, really looking at how you, what level of freedom do you have based on how your values, how you shift your, not just your values, but how different kind of responsibilities or burdens, how they change your decision-making. So hopefully this gives you some idea and I hope this exercise gives you some value yourself. If you enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe in whatever podcasting app you're listening to. Of course, this is also on YouTube now. We're continuing to invest in the quality of our YouTube. So you can expect that to get better and better. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.