I think this is great advice for planning any career. You can’t know how big of an impact you’ll have unless you know concretely what you’ll be doing and how that will have an impact.
However, I think there is a danger in going too far in trying to understand—specifically for careers which, by the nature of the career, you are bouncing around between different types of work. In these more generalist careers, the exponential relative impact of certain individual opportunities might make exploring more opportunities/putting yourself in a position to explore more opportunities more valuable than understanding exactly what you will be doing.
Time boxing or holding yourself to talk to ‘x’ number of people about a given career seems like a simple solution to this.
I think this is great advice for planning any career. You can’t know how big of an impact you’ll have unless you know concretely what you’ll be doing and how that will have an impact.
However, I think there is a danger in going too far in trying to understand—specifically for careers which, by the nature of the career, you are bouncing around between different types of work. In these more generalist careers, the exponential relative impact of certain individual opportunities might make exploring more opportunities/putting yourself in a position to explore more opportunities more valuable than understanding exactly what you will be doing.
Time boxing or holding yourself to talk to ‘x’ number of people about a given career seems like a simple solution to this.