3 Ways Your Brain Could Be Holding Back Your Career

Long-term career planning is probably the most recommended activity for professionals seeking growth, mobility, and fulfillment. In fact, if an ambitious individual doesn’t have a solid plan for their career graph, they might run the risk of wasting their potential and time in the wrong places or on the wrong people. Most career advice, however, glosses over the crucial psychological reality that our brains don’t actually want to plan our careers for the long-term.

Research reveals that the very cognitive machinery you rely on to make decisions, from choosing a new job to mapping out a five-year path, is packed with biases and shortcuts that systematically undermine long-term thinking. Here are three surprising ways your brain sabotages your career goals, backed by research and real scientific findings.

You, like most people, likely have some kind of big milestone you hope to achieve in the future—a promotion, a portfolio, a new skill—which you should ideally should be working on today. Yet, every day, you might find yourself scrolling LinkedIn or checking your email instead of taking small steps toward it.

You might feel tempted to label this tendency as laziness, but, in all likelihood, it........

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