翻译随笔(5)——如何及时补救职业遗憾

1. Choosing a job based on compensation alone
   1.仅根据薪水来选工作
   Remedy: Make a budget. If you don’t know how much money you need to live the lifestyle you feel comfortable with, you can’t accurately project whether switching jobs for a 10K pay bump is actually a good deal. Making a pros and cons list when comparing your current job with a new opportunity is also helpful. If the only advantage a job offers is a bigger pay check, you can weigh that against longer hours, a more onerous commute and increased reporting responsibilities. Keep in mind that research shows that increases in happiness based on earnings peak at about 75. Incomes above this level don’t increase your feeling of well-being on a day-to-day basis. So, if you think a jump up to 85 or 90 will make you feel less morose when your alarm goes off, you might want to look at addressing some of the non-monetary factors in your life that are contributing to your dissatisfaction.
   补救：做一个预算。如果你不知道需要多少钱才能让你生活的舒服，那么你将不能准确的知道为了一个1万美元的薪水而换工作是否是一个好主意。在比较当前工作和一个新机会时，列出彼此的利弊，这对你是很有用的。如果一个工作仅是薪水较高，那么你可以考虑下是不是要靠更长的工作时间，更繁重的工作任务。请记住，研究表明，年薪在7.5万美元以内的时候，幸福感随着薪水的增加而增加。而在此之上的话，幸福感将不会感到明显的提升。因此，如果你认为薪水涨到8.5或9万美元可以使你感到更加幸福，也许这时你需要注意寻找你生活中那些导致你不满足的非金钱因素了。
2. Staying too long in a job that you want to leave
   在你想离开的岗位上待了太久
   Remedy: The tricky aspect of this regret is that it’s typically rooted in hindsight. Only after you’ve left the job and have moved on to something better, do you start beating yourself up for not making the leap sooner, even if it hadn’t been practical or possible. What you can do is to identify the factors that kept you in your former position as red flags to be aware of in the future and work to line up supports that will allow you to more quickly capitalize on other opportunities as they may present themselves. This could include reviewing and updating your resume with new accomplishments on a monthly or quarterly basis, keeping your LinkedIn account current, building up a contingency fund to allow you to feel less tethered to your current pay check and staying in the loop on industry news and gossip to be aware of where your skills and experience could be of value.
   补救：这种遗憾的棘手之处在于是典型的后知后觉。只有当你已经离职并且在做更好的工作之后，你才开始自责为什么没有早点跳槽，即使它是不切实际或者不可能的。你所能做的就是确定使你待在前一个岗位的因素，并在将来提醒自己。而且你还需要通过各种方式来确保你可以在其他机会出现迅速的抓住它。这些方式包括，按月度或季度来审视自己，并用自己习得的新成就来更新简历，同步更新LinkedIn上的信息，建立一个应急资金以使你减少对当前工作收入的依赖，关注业内最新消息以便知道自己的技能和经验的价值在哪里。
3. Not starting your own business
   3.没有开始创业
   Remedy: While the idea of being your own boss is an attractive one, not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. Being responsible for your own success, creating a legacy for your family and improving the lives of clients and customers certainly sounds romantic, but what about the long hours, the lack of leisure time, the risk of financial failure, the fact that you’re the boss, entry-level employee, marketer, accountant and janitor all rolled into one? If you value job stability, prefer a singular focus over multi-tasking, aren’t particularly comfortable with risk and can’t imagine yourself hustling for new business on a daily basis, the entrepreneurial lifestyle isn’t for you.
   补救：虽然创业的想法很吸引人，但是并不是每一个人都适合担当企业家的角色。为了创业成功，给家人一份产业，改善顾客生活，这些听起来当然很浪漫，但是漫长的时间，没有娱乐休闲，承担财务风险，你虽贵为老板，但是需要身兼员工、营销人员、会计以及门卫等角色，你确定？如果你看重工作的稳定性，更倾向于专注单一任务而不是多个，特别不习惯于承受风险，且无法想象自己每天都在忙碌，这样的话，创业就不适合你。
4. Slacking at school
   4.学业没有学好
   Remedy: This is another hindsight-based regret that you can’t cure without a time machine. The years, energy and dollars you spent on your degree are sunk costs. You can’t do anything about your past academic track record, but you can identify the areas in which you think you fell short in your college days and figure out how to augment those shortcomings in the present. For example, if you feel you didn’t do enough networking outside of the classroom, you might consider joining an alumni group or make a greater effort to participate in professional associations in your field. If you regret skipping your 8:00 AM managerial accounting class and mourn how useful those concepts would be to you now, check out the continuing ed options at your nearest community college.
   补救：这是另一个后知后觉的遗憾，除非你穿越时空，否则无法消除这个遗憾。你在学业上花费的时间、精力、金钱都是沉没成本。对于已经过去的学业情况，你没办法改变了，但是你可以找出在大学时候你的不足之处，然后现在想方设法的加强这些不足之处。比如，如果你觉得自己课堂外的社交不足的话，你可以考虑加入一个校友协会或者努力参与到你所在领域的一个专业协会。如果你后悔自己错过了早上8点钟的管理会计课，且悲叹这些知识对现在的你多么有用，你可以去附近的社区大学看看这些课程。
5. Lacking confidence in your career intuition
   5.对自己的职业直觉缺乏信心
   Remedy: When we make a major decision such as accepting (or turning down) a job offer, we tend to exercise confirmation bias. If we think we made a good choice, we prioritize information that supports this view and if we fear we’ve made a mistake, we zero in on intel or impressions that reinforce this gut feeling. If you habitually doubt your competence when it comes to making career decisions, the issue is less about the subjective quality of your past choices and more about building confidence in your ability to guide your career in a satisfying direction and exert some degree of control over the outcomes of your choices. Addressing this could involve recalling the circumstances under which you made a particular choice and the priorities you held at the time and noting how they differ from the circumstances and priorities under which you’re evaluating those decisions. It could also involve working with a career coach to identify patterns in your decision-making and to help you bolster areas in which you’d like to increase your confidence – risk taking or negotiation, for example.
   补救：当我们做出重大决定，比如接受或者拒绝工作邀请时，我们倾向于行驶确认偏见。如果我们认为自己做的选择是对的，我们会优先考虑那些支持我们观点的信息，如果我们担心自己犯了错误，那我们会在潜意识中加强这种直觉。如果你在做职业决定的时候，习惯性的怀疑自己的能力，那么这个问题不在于你过去做的职业决定的准确与否，而在于建立自信，有能力指导自己的职业生涯在令自己满意的方向上，并对选择的结果能够把控。若要处理这个问题，这会涉及到回忆你当时做此选择的时候的环境以及当时你的优先考虑项，注意当你现在正在评估那些决定的时候看看环境和优先考虑项跟现在的不同之处。也许你应该和职业顾问合作来确定你的决策模式，以帮助你增强所在领域的信心、承担风险和谈判的能力。