Tag: Career

Many years ago, I read Derek Sivers’ post titled “Don’t Be a Donkey.” The premise of the post was that if we think long term, we realise that we can do many of the things we want to do in a lifetime, just not all at once.

Derek argued that “If you’re thirty now and have six different directions you want to pursue, then you can do each one for ten years, and have done all of them by the time you’re ninety.”

In an article published on my blog, “3 Frameworks to Figure Out What to Do with Your Career,” I wrote that most of us wrestle with two broad categories of questions in our careers — what to do and where to do it. I concluded that what to do is the more demanding of the two.

When I started my career at PwC, one of the core messages I took away from the orientation month was that “your career is in your hands.” I also understood that consultancies are highly competitive environments where you can do incredible work with intelligent people and, more importantly, where grit, energy and creativity are well rewarded.

Over the years in my career, I’ve watched people sacrifice things I wouldn’t. I’ve also sacrificed things that, to others, made little sense to give up. I’m at peace with those choices — more than that, they are the source of the deepest satisfaction I take from my career.

Marcus Aurelius, often described as the last good emperor of Rome, wrote a striking reflection on human work:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them?

Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can?

And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”

About two years ago, I applied for a job at JP Morgan that I’d found on LinkedIn. I didn’t fit the profile for the role perfectly, but it was good enough that I was invited for the first recruiter call and then to the next interview. It was at this interview that the hiring manager and I concluded that I probably wasn’t well suited for the role.

A few weeks later, I was contacted for another interview at JP Morgan, but this time for a role I hadn’t applied to. I showed up, obviously. The hiring manager informed me that I’d been recommended for the role by the previous hiring manager, who thought I might fit their team better. Unfortunately, this role didn’t work out either.

“Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” — Matthew 13:12

Early in my career, before I knew it had been popularised as The Matthew Effect, I noticed this phenomenon. I captured it in an article as “it’s much easier to get ‘another success’ once you get the first one.”