3-2-1: On Failure, Procrastination, And Dead End Jobs
Wisdom Wednesday #8
Hey fam,
It's time for your weekly dose of wisdom.
Here's 3 Idea-bites from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 big-idea to think about this week.
3 Idea-bites From Me:
Life is not linear. Take the time to integrate huge wins to carry you through the inevitable failures. You will often work weeks, months, or even years toward a goal. Once you hit it, it's easy to immediately move the goal post to the next goal. But the purpose of the hard work is to reap the rewards. If you don't reward yourself and enjoy your success, you will only know the struggle which will demotivate you. Take time to integrate huge wins. Fill up your confidence, relaxation, self esteem, etc to the max from a win, and then use that to keep you going through the next slog of hard work.
"Procrastination" comes from having an aim that is too far outside of your current capacity. Modify your task to your fit capacity. Imagine you're selling a desk and have to load it in to your coupe car. You will not get anywhere if you obsess over the goal of getting the desk to the location. It's literally physically impossible. You have to acknowledge the cars capacity and break the task down in to something that will fit. You must do the same with your goals. Set your aim, then determine your capacity, then set something that is challenging but still doable. If you won’t do it, it’s too challenging and you need to make it smaller.
You can not avoid failure. You can only choose between short term or long term failure. When you avoid difficulty or risk, you don't "escape" failure. You just offload it from your immediate emotions to your long term well being. If you avoid meeting new people for fear of getting rejected, you don't "win", you just offload your failure to your entire sphere of relationships. When you avoid leaving your comfy job to follow your risky passion, you don't "win", you just offload your failure to your entire life mission. Short term failure (tasking risk, doing hard things, pushing yourself) creates long term success. Short term success (comfort, "easy wins" of never doing anything hard, etc) leads to long term failure. The more capable you are of bearing short term failure, the more you will earn long term success.
2 Quotes From Others:
"When it comes to motivation, it doesn't matter if it's true. It matters that you believe it. When you are all in on a belief you make it true"— Chiara Mazzucco
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.” —E. M. Forster
1 Big-Idea From Me:
If You Aren’t In The Top 10% Of Your Field, You Will Always Be Overworked And Underpaid
When starting out, pick a field you find tolerable so you can build transferrable skills and experience (and, obviously, pay your bills).
But know that unless you can break into the top 10%, your progress will stagnate and you will remain overworked and underpaid.
It is not until this threshold that the curve flips, and your pay starts going way up while your work starts going way down.
Be ready to jump ship when diminishing returns kick on.
First, to another role.
Once you exhaust the growth of new roles: to another company.
Once you exhaust the growth of switching companies: to another industry.
Once you exhaust the growth of switching industries: on your own.
All the while saving and investing intelligently so you have more freedom to take riskier jumps to move faster.
Never spend more than 2 years without a least one of these. The c̶a̶k̶e̶ carrot is a lie!
Follow this trajectory until you land somewhere that:
Uses most of your unique talent stack.
The work feels like play to the point you almost feel guilty for getting paid to do it.
Your unique skill set is so valuable that it is sought after if not competed over, giving you massive leverage to negotiate pay, schedule, responsibilities, etc.
That's all for today!
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Catch you next time,
Matt