Coasting isn’t always bad

A short pause or plateau can help you leap forward later

Gooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you might happen to be!

In last week’s AMA post, I tackled the question of what to do when you have to choose between a less-than-great job on the one hand, and precarity on the other. This week, I’d like to turn to the question of what to do when you’ve had your dream job and are trying to figure out where to go next.

That’s where I’m at right now! Sort of.

I’m in the final months of what has been, hands down, the best job I’ve ever had in my life. Since the autumn of 2018, I’ve been paid to pursue my curiosity more than I ever have before, on a topic that fascinates me. I’ve also been paid to live out my dream of leading a team of fabulous researchers! And I’ve had all of that thanks to a generous, prestigious, and incredibly validating grant.

Woohoo! Yippee!

Now what?

I’m someone who is goal-driven. I always need to be aiming for something in my work (and sometimes in my play). More than anything else, I’m always aiming to get better, do more, accomplish something new or more exciting. To do anything less than that would feel…weird.

For years, I had pretty clear professional goals. My goals were primarily ‘Get a permanent job!’ or, ‘Failing that, get a big fat grant so you can run a team project!’ And now that I’ve achieved the latter, I’m reflecting more and more on whether I actually want the former. If my current job is my dream job, how can I keep doing it?

The only way to do it seems to be to get one big, fat grant after another. But to do that requires time, reflection, research, preparation, and resources. And while I have plenty of ideas for other research and writing projects (I’m almost never out of ideas!), I’m not sure that I have one that could form the kernel of a team project I could lead for 4-6 years.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone in a similar position who was just awarded yet another wonderful grant (woohoo!!!) and who joked about how people like us are under pressure to constantly be coming up with the next ‘million-dollar idea’. Now that I’ve had one, I find that pressure galvanizing (most of the time). But I don’t think I’ve landed on my next million-dollar idea yet.

So what should I be aiming for right now?

The answer I’ve landed on may surprise you: I’m aiming to coast. And by ‘coast’, I don’t mean ‘do nothing’. I’m simply not aiming at something that will necessarily take me another rung up the Ladder of Achievement. My goal right now is simply to get support for another few years so I can think of my next million-dollar idea.

If my career up until now has been one massive slog of a climb (though a little more exhilarating in recent years), I think I’m at the point where I could use a brief plateau. Most of the time, we don’t think of plateaus as good things (just ask the nearest athlete). We usually think of them as moments when the line on the graph charting our progress flattens out. Plateaus feel like moments when growth doesn’t happen, or when nothing happens. But plateaus are a lot more than that.

A plateau is a chance to catch your breath. It’s a recovery period for your muscles and your mind. It’s a chance to look around you and take in the view while you keep moving forward with less effort.

Because that’s the thing about coasting: you keep moving forward. Sure, at some point you have to pedal to keep going (and to keep from falling over). But coasting for a little bit means that, when you start pedaling again, you’ll have more energy to do it. And when you’re facing the next climb, you’ll be readier to tackle it.

Of course, acquiring the privilege to coast still requires a lot of hard work, not to mention luck. Some of that hard work I’ve already put in—it’s already on display in my CV. Some of that hard work is what I’m doing right now, scrambling to pull another grant proposal together (with my fingers tightly crossed the whole time!). But I think the benefits of coasting are worth the effort it’ll take to get there.

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VB,

M