Benjamin Todd

For example, if you want a family, you'll probably want a job without extreme working hours.

And eight, combine all these perspectives.

Predicting career success is hard and there's no single approach that's reliable.

So it's useful to consider all of the perspectives above and focus on options that seem good from several of them.

See our individual career reviews in Appendix 8 for more advice on how to assess your fit with a specific job.

Making good predictions in general is difficult, but it's also very useful if your aim is to do good, so we also have an article on how to get better at making decisions and predicting the future.

How much should you explore in your career?

Suppose you've decided to try a job for a few years.

You now face a trade-off.

Should you stick with it or quit with the hope of finding something better?

Many successful people explored a lot early in their career.

Tony Blair worked as a rock music promoter before going into politics.

Maya Angelou worked as a cable car conductor, a cook, and a calypso dancer before she switched into writing and activism.

While Steve Jobs even spent a year in India on acid and considered moving to Japan to become a Zen monk.

That's some serious exploration.

Examples of people who specialized early, like Tiger Woods, often stand out to us, but it doesn't seem necessary to specialize that early, and it's probably not even the norm.

In the book, Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein argues that most people try several paths, and that athletes who try several sports before settling on one tend to be more successful, holding up Roger Federer as a foiled tiger.

A 2018 study in Nature found that hot streaks among creatives and scientists tended to follow periods of exploring several areas.

And today it's widely accepted that many people will work in several sectors and roles across their lifetime.

A typical 25 to 34 year old changes jobs every three years, and changes are not uncommon later too.