There are big lessons for us all in our careers from the journey Tom Brady is on to decide his next move. A word (just to make you smarter), a relevant career progression term and an idea await below.

Throw out your word-of-the-day calendar. There are big career-decision lessons for us all in the “Tom Brady…is he retiring or not?” story that fills the sports headlines. The most important of which is the term “recency bias”. 

Here’s the background: Tom Brady has a life-altering, team-altering, league-altering, fandom-altering decision in front of him. The GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) quarterback in the NFL is older than every other player in the league by 4+ years, has accomplished everything there is to accomplish, and is still performing in the top 1% of the league, but is it time to go?

(Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

It’s been ten days since his team lost in the divisional round of the playoffs. He’s on an emotional low. Every conversation he has with anyone outside of his circle, every radio station and talk show, and every fan is asking, “Is this it? Are you retiring?”

Your word-of-the-day lesson for today is “fallacious”

Your term-of-the-day lesson for today is “recency bias”

A rumor came out that the decision has been made, and that he’s on the way out. His father has come out and proclaimed that the rumors that a decision has been made are wrong. As a matter of fact, Tom Brady Sr. said that any proclamations regarding the future of his son’s career are “fallacious”. I had to look it up, and it’s an appropriate word. To save you all the time, and to make you just a hair smarter than you already are, here’s the definition.

“fallacious”: Based on a mistaken belief

Either way, if Tom has already made a decision, the difference between it being a good one and a bad one has everything to do with timing. The timing of important decisions is vital to the odds that said decision will be a good one, especially when it comes to your career. If Tom Brady made his decision weeks ago, it may be a good one. If Tom Brady made his decision shortly after the loss, it may be bad. The difference? Is “recency bias” playing a role in the decision?

“recency bias”: The tendency to put too much emphasis on experiences that are freshest in our minds – even if they are not the most relevant or reliable

Emotional highs & emotional lows are the absolute worst times to make important decisions for football players…or YOU!

Especially around your career – the decisions you make within it – you never get back. I can point to every one of my career decisions having influenced where I am now…some good, some crappy.

I chased money…twice. They were both horrible decisions. The first was back in March of 2000. It was during the internet boom, where pretty much any company could establish themselves, come up with an idea, raise craploads of money, list their stock publicly, and boom! Everyone’s a millionaire. At the time, I had just finished a year where I did over 800% of my target, but I had a capped compensation plan. Yes…seriously! I maxed out my compensation plan, and saw some shmoes who sucked at my company going to stupid startups and cashing 7-figure stock wins out of nothing. I’m crushing my quota and eating Raman. They sucked and were able to beat people with their giant wallets. 

However, in March of 2000, the bubble was beginning to burst. I wasn’t smart enough to see it. The barge had left the shore…I went running for it and landed right in the water. I didn’t last 3-months and had to swim for shore. I made almost nothing at another startup, then had two more short, awful stops (the second one for the money) before I woke up to the realization that letting emotion run my career was a loser’s bet.

And, back then changing jobs wasn’t as easy as it is today. I mean, every job change included a hefty dose of physical and emotional cost. Today, not so much.

Physical Cost: Back in the in-the-office world, the physical cost of changing jobs was pretty significant. Your commute really mattered. Was it near or far? How would I get there every day? What were the expectations? You had to think about your car, taking trains, gas money, parking, bringing a lunch or going out every day, the office environment, etc. Today, there’s really not much of any physical cost to changing jobs. The commute doesn’t change. You still have to walk all the way across the room in your house to whatever area you call your office. In the new job, the effort is in setting up a new laptop, filling out some forms, selecting your insurance, and you’re all set. The next day a pair of logo’d socks shows up – and you’re in the honeymoon phase.

Emotional Cost: When you’re in the trenches every day with your co-workers, they truly become your best friends. My buds from my first jobs are still some of my closest because we were together every single day. We went to lunches, sales meetings, actual happy hours, I even went on vacations with my co-workers. Today, where’s the emotional cost of a job change? I mean, you’ve only met most of your co-workers on a 14” computer monitor. Could you even guess how tall your co-workers are? Probably not…

As a result, you’re more apt to make a bad decision today via emotional highs and lows. There are still 700k+ open sales jobs available today according to ZipRecruiter. There are posts on LinkedIn stupidly encouraging you to chase money. And in the sales profession, emotions are part of the game – and could ruin your career, if you let them.

– You just finished a crappy month/year. “Screw this place.”
– Reorg is coming. “If I’m gonna have to start over, might as well start over somewhere else!”
– Pipeline isn’t looking too good “Might as well jump now before everyone notices my pipeline sucks.”
– And, my buddy over at XYZ company is LOVING it…and they’re hiring! “Off I go…”

The bias of recency – any of the above happening – could trigger you into a decision to bolt what could be a great spot long-term for your career in pursuit of a short-term reward. 

Schedule it

As of today, February 1st, 2022, it is said that Tom Brady is out of the country, and has shut off everything. He is putting the emotions behind him, and thinking through his decision with his family. That’s smart! 

You probably don’t have the ability to just go jet off to some exotic foreign land and marinate in the sun while you ponder your decision. But there’s something you can do. Schedule your career decisions. It was a lesson I learned from my errors, and it served me incredibly well in terms of sanity, focus, and intelligent moves.

The middle of each quarter, on my calendar, there was a meeting I would have with myself. In that meeting, I would essentially look at what was going on around me and decide, “should I stay or should I look?” That decision was the decision for the next 90-days. In other words, if I told myself, “I’m staying”, I would ignore everything that would take my focus away from my current role for 90 days. Recruiter calls, enticing exploration opportunities with PE firms, exec buddies of mine, or any other type of opportunity. 

Doing so in the middle of a quarter allowed me to avoid the quarter-beginning and quarter-end emotions. There rarely was anything driving me way up or way down. November 15th, 2017 was the date I officially decided to write The Transparency Sale. February 15th, 2018 was the date I officially decided to leave my role as CRO and dedicate myself full-time to writing the book. Every mid-quarter before that for over 3-years? I decided I wasn’t listening to anything. I put out the noise, and we were the fastest-growing tech company in Chicago from 2014-2017 (Deloitte). 

Why not consider scheduling it yourself. Remove the emotion. Remove the recency bias. Be intentional about your career decisions and journey. 

I write every day. It helps my brain…and I love it. Nobody sees most of what I write, but if you want to, bookmark the blog here and come back often. You’ll see fits and starts in my writing because I’m working on my new book, The Transparent Sales Leader, too. While waiting on edits to come back, I write and post. While working on the book, you won’t see posts. Let me know what you think…

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