Early Traps of Work After High School

Humans have already been shown to neglect past experience when making predictions, as discussed in the case of believing one has ample time to waste. Another experience that is often ignored is the harms of overcommitment or doing too much. Looking back at the learnings from school, students are often surprised at how long it took for them to learn so little. If asked to imagine the time taken to relearn (or maybe to teach to another person), many would estimate that the senior courses can be done in less than two years, and all of high school in much less than six. So why did it take so long? Looking back, many students should be able to recall the feeling of burn-out. When there are so many subjects to cover, and little time allocated to decompress and reflect on learning, students progress through school under a fog that makes their learning much less effective.

Modern work culture gives you plenty of opportunities to be over-worked and burnt out throughout the rest of your life. There is no need for you to forcibly contribute to it as well. Overcommitment prevents rest and important reflection. It is as illogical as sacrificing sleep to get more study done.

What are signs that one is doing too much? You say yes to everything. Can every decision be justified clearly? Can you re-explain the purpose of each obligation that you have taken on? A useful guide is that fact that many experts state that most people have only 2-4 hours of quality productivity in a day. The objective thus should not be to block out as many hours as possible in one’s own calendar, but to optimise those few productive hours. This also has the advantage of motivating people to do the few things they have chosen well, rather than to just phone it in. In a nice overlap with the previous point, it is all about changing out perception of the value of time, and then modifying behaviour accordingly.

A subset of the prediction fallacies that have already been discussed is one known as the ‘end of history’ fallacy. It describes how people mistakenly treat their current state (or the state of the world) as more than a single point in time, but the endpoint of a long development. That is, despite being able to look back in time and see how much one has changed over the years, people will believe that there is no more change on the horizon and will make decision accordingly. This is a major source of unhappiness as people lock themselves into paths that are hard to divert from, and as they inevitably change their values and priorities, develop resentment for the trap that they have fallen into. The psychologist Jeffrey Arnett and other prominent figures are strong believers that humans undergo drastic changes in personalist and value set all the way until their late twenties. That would mean that any life decisions that a person decides to make before then, is literally made on behalf of a person that doesn’t even exist yet. We bemoan the close-mindedness of our older generation and yet many people are being the oppressive tiger mum to their own future selves.

Inspired by the concept of opportunity cost, one should acknowledge that saying yes to something is saying no to something else. This is means caution should be taken towards saying yes to things that involve a long-term obligation that is hard to turn back from. Here are some examples of key opportunities that should be considered, for students on different university pathways. For those in the STEM field, the 1st year is a chance to learn the ropes. There is plenty of challenge, but with bigger opportunities not often being available at this novice stage, students can find themselves taking on additional outside work such as employment and very easily get burnt out. The 2nd year is where the doors open. In science, there are many opportunities to take part in research groups, and many engineering and technology students move into internships. In an education specific example, the second year of a Master of Teaching is when approval to work in schools is given. Consider two scenarios. In one, a student races to max out their capacity and gets burnt out in the first year, and then is unable, or too exhausted to fully explore their new opportunities in the second year. The other case, a student still applies themselves in their first year but leaves room for reflection, and so in the second year, can ramp up their commitment and full invest into new opportunities. To give a specific example, there are individual research projects that USyd science students have access to from second year onwards, though they are advertised as a third-year unit. The degree specifies that every advanced student needs to do one of these units to graduate, and so that is exactly what most students to. But a minority of students who were very conscientious in their planning realised the significance of research experience and went beyond the minimum expectation. Some spent additional time beyond the requirements or went out of their way to contact a research group on their own to nominate for the project, rather than waiting to be randomly matched. While most people did a single project and simply got a line on their academic transcript (the university equivalent of a report card), I completed two projects, and in both of them, made extensive contributions in order to be mentioned in the author list for two published papers (one for each project). Some students going even further, even overloaded their allowed units to complete four research projects by the end of their degree.