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Why do we sabotage our careers?

Why do we sabotage our careers?

My own experience with self-sabotage and how you can fight it

Giammarco Pacifico
January 10, 2024

During my career from academia to the corporate world and then to startups, I had to deal with many hidden traps.

The most insidious ones have been traps of my own making.

I fell for them countless times (and still do) but over time, I’ve developed some systems to help me recognize and deal with them before the damage becomes too big.

Let’s dive into self-sabotage.

What is self-sabotage?

In short, it’s when we take an action (or inaction) that is not aligned with our internal knowledge of what’s best for us. It implies that we are subconsciously aware of the right decision but we somehow decide otherwise, leading to our own detriment.

❝

I want [X] but I keep doing [Y]

A nerdy definition of self-sabotage

I’ve never fully understood why I would try to sabotage my career, especially after putting in so much effort. Let alone why would anyone else do it.

I’ll let psychologists explain the behavioural and biological root causes of self-sabotage.

Instead, I’ll tell you something I know far better: what self-sabotage looks like.

Starting by taking action to change the current situation
Experiencing stress and anxiety
Focusing on the negatives and why it will never work
Abandoning the original plan and slowly returning to the status quo
Blaming others for our situation

If this resonates with you then you might be a self-sabotage expert too.

How I fight self-sabotage

As you can already tell from the steps above, experiencing strong emotions is the trigger that starts the spiral of bad behaviours. If I don’t catch that early on, it gets harder and harder to change course and once I get to Step 5, it’s usually too late.

Here are 3 scenarios:

1. Perfectionism & never feeling ready

Spending countless hours tweaking presentations or postponing an important decision forever with the excuse of wanting everything to look perfect is a sneaky situation.

It turns out it’s never about achieving perfection, but a series of countless improvements and adjustments that give us a reason not to do it. And of course, that “perfect moment” never comes.

My triggers are anxiety about the deadline approaching and guilt for not having already finished it, like a weird sense of procrastination.

Once I recognize such triggers, I’ve learned to default to the 80/20 principle, understanding that I will never get to 100% and focusing on getting 80% of the way there. Because progress beats perfection every time.

If you also feel trapped in the procrastination trap, give it a shot and try to be comfortable with things being 80% ready. I can promise you’ll feel much better after getting started.

2. Imposter syndrome

I’ve had the chance to work with some very smart and some very rich people. During these times, instead of making the most of the situation and appreciating the opportunity, I often felt in the wrong place, not having earned the right to be in that room.

The triggers here are mostly nervousness that rapidly turns into embarrassment after doing or saying something that was maybe a bit out of place.

Even today, this remains a tough one. What I found out works for me is to zoom out of the situation and get some perspective by asking myself: what would happen if everything went wrong?

As I go through that scenario in my mind, picturing the worst outcome, I realize I’ll be ok and I try to get out of that state of mind, which always leads to underperforming (trust me on this).

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They can’t kill you and they can’t eat you.

Len Fassler to Brad Feld in 2001

3. Focusing on the negatives

This is the master of all triggers and follows any feelings or emotions.

There is no doubt that, as humans, we are much more averse to risk than inclined toward positive outcomes. But in my case, this leads to rabbit holes of nefarious consequences which turns into not taking any action.

It’s the reason why I stayed in an obviously bad job at a toxic company for longer than needed instead of moving on. And it’s the reason I never launched my own company (yet).

The trigger for this one is sadness as I internalize that the situation won’t change and accept being stuck for another while.

The only way I found to get out of this is to ask someone else.

So next time you feel sad and you realize that focusing too much on the negative is preventing you from taking action, ask someone you trust. Even better if that person is where you want to be.

These realizations are never easy to accept and they will probably make you feel a bit uncomfortable.

As busy professionals (and humans) trying to do our best, the only thing we can do is acknowledge our own traps and put systems in place so that when we find ourselves in that situation, we change course, even by a little bit.

Are you standing in the way of your own career?

If you want, hit reply and let me know (I reply to every email)

This week's top scientific reads

11 clinical trials that will shape medicine in 2024 (Nature Medicine)
ChatGPT can now design and synthesize drugs (Nature)
CAR-T cells made inside the body (Nature)
Breathing helps you make memories while asleep (Nature Communications)
Women were great hunters too (Scientific American)

Read my comments on these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

Ready to turn this news into your next career opportunity? Here is how

Apollo Therapeutics raised €31M for their drug development platform at scale focused on oncology, inflammatory disorders and rare diseases 🇬🇧
Beckley Psytech closed a €46M round to develop short-duration psychedelics therapies against neuropsychiatric conditions 🇬🇧
Resalis Therapeutics raised €10M to move forward with their products on non-coding RNAs against metabolic disorders 🇮🇹
Manina Medtech raised €1.75M to further advance their diagnostic platform to detect endometrial receptivity in IVF embryo implantation 🇪🇸
LEM Surgical raised a €22.6 Series B for the development of its robotic spinal cord surgery system and preparation for FDA submission 🇨🇭
Scewo raised €9.9M to further expand commercial efforts for their stair-climbing electric wheelchair and expand to the US 🇨🇭

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