You're unhappy with your job. You want to quit. But when you actually think about changing jobs, you freeze.
"What if the next place is worse?" "Should I really give up the stability I have?" "If it goes wrong, I can't undo it."
This fear doesn't come from you being unusually timid. The way human judgment works makes change look frightening.
We feel losses about twice as strongly
Kahneman and Tversky showed that people don't weigh losses and gains equally (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). For the same amount of money, the pain of losing feels bigger than the joy of gaining. This is called "loss aversion," and many later studies have estimated that losses are felt about twice as strongly as gains.
Applied to changing jobs, it looks like this:
| What you might lose | What you might gain |
|---|---|
| Work you know, the reputation you've built, familiar relationships, your current salary | Work that fits, new growth, better conditions, peace of mind |
| Easy to picture clearly | Blurry |
What you'd lose is concrete, and it feels heavy. What you'd gain is abstract, and it feels light. With that combination, change always looks like a worse deal than it really is.
In the long run, we regret what we didn't do
Research on regret, though, shows a slightly different picture.
Gilovich and Medvec studied what people regret in life (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). Over short time spans, people tend to regret things they did. But looking back over long spans, regrets about things they didn't do were more common and lasted longer.
Things you tried and failed at get reframed over time as lessons and experience. Things you didn't do stay as "what if," never getting an answer.
What shrinks the fear isn't a decision, but information
Much of the fear comes from the gains being vague. So what you need to reduce it isn't to work up the courage to decide. It's to make what you'd gain more concrete.
Starting a job search doesn't mean you have to quit.
- Browse job listings: find out what jobs your experience lets you apply for
- Sign up for a headhunting service: see what companies are interested in your background
- Talk to a recruitment agent: hear from outside what the market looks like and what your strengths are
- Talk to someone who changed jobs: ask what actually changed
All of these can be done while keeping your current job. As information grows, "what you might gain" starts to take shape. Then you can compare. And once you can compare, fear turns into judgment.
Today's exercise
- Write down three things you might lose by changing jobs
- Write down three things you want to gain, as concretely as possible
- For one of the things you want to gain, gather one piece of information this week
You're not scared because you're weak. You're scared because you're seeing clearly what you might lose.
When what you want to gain becomes just as clear, fear turns into judgment.
References
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291.
Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2), 379–395.