TL;DR: You're not running out of time—you already did. That job-hopping pattern you call "learning experiences"? It's your brain lying to you about having infinite tomorrows. Research shows we're wired to think we have more time than we do, but here's the framework that fixes it before you hit 50 and corporate America ghosts you.
I Thought I Had More Time
I meet many people who seem to think they have all the time in the world to "make it."
And then, one day, they find themselves realizing that they ran out of time to make it.
And now they panic.
A new client of mine approached me last month, desperate to find a new job in executive leadership. For the past 5 years, she has found herself job-hopping through three jobs with three different employers. She could not make it past 18 months.
Her primary takeaway was "I learn something new every time." Obviously, that is BS as she continues to repeat the same career behavior and patterns, preventing her from staying long enough to level up.
She will be 50 in 12 years, and if she doesn't fix that soon, she will find that she didn't go anywhere and will experience a much harder time finding new employment. After all, corporate America spits you out like a bad habit when you hit your 50s.
The Science Behind This
Your brain is playing a dirty trick on you. It's called the planning fallacy, and research from Buehler and colleagues shows we consistently underestimate how long things take by up to 67%. You know that promotion you think you'll get next year after this "learning experience"? Your brain's lying.
Here's what's really happening. You're caught in three psychological traps working together to screw you over.
First, there's temporal discounting. Your brain values today's comfort way more than tomorrow's success. Staying in that dead-end job feels safer right now than the discomfort of actually fixing your patterns. Research by Zhang and Ma (2024) found this directly correlates with chronic procrastination—the more you discount the future, the more you delay taking action.
Second, you're rationalizing failures as "lessons" without actually changing anything. Steel's meta-analysis showed that people with this pattern have a 40% higher correlation with impulsiveness. You jump ship thinking the next job will be different, but you're bringing the same broken playbook.
Third, younger professionals massively overestimate their career runway. Carstensen's research on Future Time Perspective shows we think we have expansive time when we're younger. But that 12-year window to 50? That's 8 job changes at her current rate. Eight chances to go nowhere.
I've worked with hundreds of executives who hit this wall. They all said the same thing: "I thought I had more time to figure it out." The research confirms what I see daily—we're biologically wired to think tomorrow will magically fix today's problems.
The Solution
It's tough for me to see good people in this position. And usually, I am not as direct, but I am compelled to let you know that you can create your personalized career playbook in about 6 weeks and learn to decide what you actually need to learn and—equally important—what you do not need to learn in order to "make it."
It's called Dr. Degnan's Career Playbook. It is a scientific, real-world applied framework to help you identify the patterns that keep holding you back from "making it" in time. It's simple to get started by booking your discovery call:
The Burnout Connection
Here's the brutal truth about thinking you have more time: you burn out twice. First, slowly, as you exhaust yourself jumping between jobs, convincing yourself each move is progress. You're not building anything—you're just running on a treadmill that's slowly speeding up.
Then comes the second burnout. The panic burnout. When you're 48 and realize you've been a "senior manager" for a decade while your peers are C-suite. When every job application feels desperate. When you finally understand that "learning from each experience" meant nothing because you never stayed long enough to implement what you learned.
The temporal abundance illusion doesn't just steal your time—it steals your energy in installments until there's nothing left but regret and exhaustion. My client? She's already feeling the pre-panic. That constant low-grade anxiety that maybe, just maybe, she's running out of runway.
That's burnout's real face. Not the dramatic flame-out, but the slow realization that you've been burning your career capital thinking you were building it.
Take Action Today
Stop telling yourself stories about tomorrow. Your brain's default setting is to lie about time. The research proves it. My experience with 1,600+ employees and 300+ clients confirms it.
You need a systematic approach that overrides these psychological traps. That's exactly what we'll build together.
Book your discovery call and let's create your actual playbook—not the fantasy one your brain keeps selling you.
Until next time!
—Oliver
