The most important decision in our life is our career. It's literally our purpose in life. What else is our purpose in life, if not the endeavour to which we dedicate the bulk of our energy and waking hours, for decades of our mental and physical prime?
well said, copied from notes elsewhere
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I've identified three conditions for a successful career, summarised into questions:
1) Can I earn money doing this?
2) Am I good at this?
3) Do I even like this?
Ideally, we want to have a career that we like, we're good at, and can make us money. It often isn't very possible to have all three, because, well, for starters, some of these conditions are already contradictory. Condition 3 implies a fun job, but, if it's such a fun job, why would people need to pay you so much, or at all? This contradicts condition 1.
Plenty of people would do fun things for free even, like sports or performing arts. Conversely, high-paying jobs like being a lawyer or auditor usually suck, because they need to be high-paying to incentivise smart people to even want to do these shit jobs. If you're a lawyer or auditor, I bet you think you deserve a raise, not a pay cut. That's exactly my point. You wouldn't really bother demanding a raise for something you're already having a blast doing.
There's also a possible contradiction between conditions 1 and 2. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that people will pay you for it. I'm pretty damn good at Slitherlink, but, because solving Slitherlink puzzles in record time has no market value whatsoever, I can't make it my career. Conditions 2 and 3 can also contradict one another. I'd probably make a mean chemist (I'm a Singapore Chemistry Olympiad Gold medal winner), but I hate chemistry and science with all my guts, so that industry is a no-go.
In choosing a career, we're often forced to sacrifice one or more conditions. Manual labourers probably hate their jobs and get paid very little but get hired only because they fulfilled condition 2. They probably don't have much of a choice, because they're only good at so few things. Others like most educated professionals probably have conditions 1 and 2 satisfied, but find condition 3 impossible to achieve. Some very enviable ones have all three fulfilled, including prominent actors, singers, athletes, authors, artists, and (arguably) entrepreneurs.
Here's me inevitably bruising your ego: you're probably not smart, determined, or fortunate enough to fulfil all three conditions. But that doesn't mean that we can't put some thought into carving out our optimum career path. We still need to find ways to prioritise the conditions, in order to determine which conditions we're willing to sacrifice and which are mandatory to us. Since most of us are educated and middle-class enough, we actually do have a choice in the career question.
Here's what I think about:
(A) Sacrificing condition 1 (money)
Choosing a career that can't make you money is pretty stupid. Money is the key to sustainability. Most of us don't make this mistake, however, because we're materialistic whores whose ego, comfort, and happiness are derived from material possessions.
But let's go deeper than that... You know what's more stupid? Always choosing guaranteed money upfront over potential money in the future. Some careers are pretty straightforward, like engineering. All engineers make money, upfront and guaranteed. Others are more complicated, like entrepreneurship or filmmaking. We have obscure and flat-out-broke directors who direct short film after short film for years and still haven't found their big break; yet we also have ultra-famous billionaire directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and James Cameron. Ditto entrepreneurship: for every Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Groupon founder, there are like a million others who're broke or just barely surviving.
This is where it starts to get hazy. Should you go for something with a 100% chance of paying you $5,000 a month now or something with a 1% chance of paying you $5,000,000 five years from now? Believe it or not, either answer is right; it simply depends on your "risk appetite" (a euphemism for "capability"). Just don't choose a career that neither pays you $5,000 a month now nor possibly pay you millions in the future.
Starving now while working on a disruptive business model = Smart
Indulging in carving eggshell art just because you like it and are good at it = Dumb
(B) Sacrificing condition 2 (competence)
Choosing a career that you like and makes money sounds great, IF you're good at it. Trying to dabble in a line in which you simply have no aptitude is a recipe for disaster, because your suckiness will catch up with you faster than you can get your first paycheck. It seems obvious that you shouldn't even try to make it in something in which you totally stink at, like trying to be a professional badminton player when you've been overweight your whole life. It's irrational and self-defeating to choose a career for which you have no talent.
...except that it isn't. Avoiding a career that would otherwise earn you money and keep you happy working on it, just because you suck at it, is incredibly stupid, too. "I'm just not good enough" is the hallmark of a failed human being, because, out of the three conditions, condition 2 is the only one within your control -- it's changeable! You shouldn't ever forgo a career that you like and makes money, because it's really rare to have that love and money combination. The solution is obvious: get good at it, then try again.
(C) Sacrificing condition 3 (happiness)
Fact: the vast majority of us aren't happy in our careers. We dread Mondays, we look forward to Fridays, we feel the need to reward ourselves with shopping or drinking at the end of every work day to substitute for the fulfilment that we couldn't find at work, we're constantly "stressed" and "burnt out", we feel so exhausted by the weekends that we don't even try to enjoy ourselves anymore, and -- most tellingly -- we rarely smile or laugh while we're at work. In our minds, it's all bullshit that we have to endure just to get paid (e.g. meetings, reports, presentations, consultations, projects, appointments, sales calls, product lines, etc.). What a hopeless, defeatist bunch of people!
Instead of quitting and finding a job that doesn't compromise our happiness and quality of life so much (which is the only right thing to do), you know how we cope? Two ways: 1) we rationalise that it's all justified -- the cash makes up for the daily torture, or 2) we pretend that we find our work "interesting" or "challenging" or "have prospects" and try to love it, because, well, Steve Jobs said "love what you do".
The people who belong to category 2 are immensely retarded. In our personal relationships, we know that it's silly to force ourselves to love someone we really don't. We shouldn't need to rationalise anything, unless we did something irreversible (like marriage, where a husband is unlikely to admit his wife is a bad choice, because it discredits him for choosing her in the first place). Fortunately, job choices are reversible. Pretending to like something you don't is double-torture, because, first, you're tortured by the shitty work, and, second, you're adding torture to yourself by putting up a false front and being deluded. Stop kidding yourself. Bosses suck. Paperwork suck. Offices suck. Repetitive work suck. Work that requires zero creativity suck.
At least the people in category 1 know that their work is nonsense. They're much closer to enlightenment and career fulfilment, because at least they acknowledge the terrible nature of their job and its adverse effects on their body, mind, and soul. Sooner or later, they'll realise that it simply isn't "justified" anymore, because happiness is worth more than a few additional thousand dollars a month. These people, in fact, are more likely to find additional passive income streams to supplement their main income source, which is possibly the next best thing to quitting outright.
I think happiness should be ranked equally as important as financial prospects in choosing a career, i.e. if something doesn't keep us BOTH happy and well-fed, keep looking for another career. After all, money is a means to an end: we'll ultimately use it to buy stuff and experiences to make ourselves happy. Happiness is an end in itself. I bet most people would say happiness is the meaning of life, not money.
Or put it in another way: you spend the majority of your life at work (including all your prime years). Do you want to spend all those decades being unhappy? That's up to you. I'd rather be unemployed and live simply than to put up with bullshit and, after all that gargantuan sacrifice, merely live middle-class.
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