Career Path

The life of the talented polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci is examined for reflective purposes for individual career path.

The process of career strategy formation starts with fantasy which gets one to formulate possibilities of anything and everything. The vision and mission that sets the drive or purpose in life. However, elimination of fantasies comes in when realism sets in, keeping the fantasies in check. With the great tension within individuals between fantasy and realism, is where the actual crystalisation of one's career begins. Options of the path ahead and route to take are laid with the interplay of the needs to physiological well being, security, social, esteem and self actualisation (Maslow Hierarchy of Needs). These needs guide the decision making process and throughout the rest of the career path. The options are prioritised and implementated, acting upon the favored path.

The drive comes from the innate need to achieve pleasure through Eros, the desire to build and unite or Thanatos, the desire for death. There is an instinctive behaviour where every individual compete to win for in wnning, pleasure is received biological and psychological, hence the drive in becoming better. Supplementing this drive, motivation of seeing the option through can come intrinsically and extrinsically. The intrinsic motivation can come from the pleasure of developing one's mastery of the skill, overcoming the challenges and the variety of the tasks associated for a particular mastery. One will seek the environment enabling personal growth and development (Holland's Theory) and contributes to the extrinsic motivation. In the implementation of the option, it is of experimentation and stabilizing is eventually achieved from the original tension in the phase of crystalisation.

The drive for performance usher in the consolidation of the achievements and failures through reviewing. To better understand the workings for such reviewing to take place, the underlying reasons, the motives for performance achievement should be examined. Behavior is a response of a personality to the environment which is purposed to derive pleasure. Behaviour and attitude in achieving pleasure differ from person to person. The psyche determines the inclination towards either being task-involved, deriving pleasure from the act of acquiring skills and understanding or ego-involved, deriving pleasure from demostration of superior abilities. Optimisation of pleasure can be attained by behaviors categorised as approaching or avoiding objectives. By approaching, pleasure is received through favorable competence judgement while by avoiding, the consequence of unfavourable competence of withdrawn pleasure is prevented (self worth theory). Having this understanding, the career strategy of reviewing process filters the undesirable and focuses on the desirable areas, prompting the participation and withdrawal from certain activity in order to gain or avoid favorable or unflavorable competence judgement.

Self actualisation and a virtuous cycle of achieving pleasure is eventually obtained through the continuous engagement in the pleasure deriving action, anchoring the indivdual into that particular career field towards mastery and expertise.


More of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Drawing out my career path in my mind.