In episode #12 of My 2.0, guest Jessi Hempel, Host of the Hello Monday podcast and Senior Editor at Large at LinkedIn, shares her personal transition story as well as what she has experimentally learnt through her podcast. 

Jessi has wanted to be a writer since 3rd grade, and went to college to become a journalist. She wrote for Time Asia, Business Week, Fortune and Wired. She was always seeing clearly the next rung of the ladder and was able to climb it. But that started to change as she got to Conde Nast in 2018. While her position was secure, she knew the company was in financial trouble and that she was a part of a dying industry. She also knew she was at the top of her food chain and that it was time to move on. 

She has always been interested in and fascinated with technology. So when LinkedIn approached her in 2018 to start their podcast, giving her all the resources, smart people and freedom to further her career, she didn’t very long to make that decision. 

She does not think we need a full skill set to transition to a new career but she feels that women in particular feel the need to. 

Some transition myths she would like to debunk are that there is a right time to transition. In her opinion, there is not. They should happen when they are supposed to happen. She further mentions one of her guests Bruce Feiler who thinks transitions will be lifelong, happening one every 7 years. 

Below are some of the topics we talked about from a few of her episodes at Hello Monday.

Reinventing ourselves. Dorrie Clark. 

• Conducting experiments/soft launching or plan B. Women don’t give themselves enough credit about hard things. Plan B with Plan A is hard but is very possible. 
• Branding. Women find it hard to talk about themselves. But branding is simply featuring our differentiators contained in our personality. 

Burnout. Emily and Amelia Nagosky.

• Stress and stressor. They are two different things that should be treated differently. While identifying and solving for the root cause is critical, it is equally important for us to deal with the stress as well. Especially if we can’t do anything about the stressor. 
• Self care of the individual and through the community. We need to take care of ourselves individually but also responsibly lift the community around us. 

Designing your life. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. 

• Circumstances/Gravity. We need to understand what we are capable of and design a life with goals we can achieve. It may feel hard and unfair, but that’s what life is. 
• Separating career and passion. The notion of combining career with passion is 20th century and applicable to Gen X.  But we need to be open to the fact that the two may not intersect and that it’s ok for them to diverge. 

Career change. Robin Arzon.

• Discomfort in career is not the same as athletic discomfort. It seems easier to push ourselves more physically than it is intellectually. 

What does it mean to have it all? 

• This is also a 20th century notion to have it all. And it doesn’t work. What works is our ability to make a choice from options we have, and to feel solid in our choice. 

Jessi’s question to me. What’s the one thing I didn’t know that I know now. 

To which I responded that transitions are hard, take their own time and are best when planned and gradual. And we don’t need a full skill set to turn to a new career and definitely need cheerleaders along the way. 

Resources: 

• Hello Monday