The Scenic Route

Generalize, then specialize

As Jeff Bezos so brilliantly put it in Invent and Wander:

It is not a work-life balance, but rather a work-life mesh. This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.

I don’t believe work-life balance exists anymore. In an age where everyone has a work from home setup, the new paradigm has shifted to “work from anywhere, at any time.” The pendulum has swung to more flexibility for both employee and employer, where in a remote-first world individuals are actually clocking more hours! According to data from happiness at work, the average individual will spend about 90,000 of their hours working, or around 1/3 of a lifetime. That is a whole LOT of time to not absolutely love what you’re doing.

Think about it: 8 hours a day working, 5 days a week versus 8 hours a day sleeping, 7 days a week. And assuming the work study is based on 40 hours a week, with the 9-5 kind of dead, the gap between time working and time sleeping likely has shrunk further.

Now does this mean we should “follow our passion?” I don’t necessarily think so. I think it’s important to follow the path that enables us to “do cool things, with cool people, that compensate us a cool amount.” And the compensation doesn’t always have to be monetary. For example, if your job is to be a travel blogger and you are compensated partially by paid stays at luxury resorts, I would imagine for some time this could take care of a decent chunk of your discretionary spending (if you’re into travel).

As someone who is still fresh in their career, it’s hard to find something that you “love.” But one thing is for sure, you don’t do it from the sidelines in a current role you, in fact, do not love. I think there is a certain allure to the “tried and true” path. In finance, for example, it looks something like this: go into investment banking for 2 years, then do traditional private equity for 2 years, then do 2 years at an elite MBA program, and then figure it out from there. It’s safe in the sense that you know what you’re getting yourself into and you know what you’re getting out of it. But there are the considerations of 1) what is the opportunity cost of these steps and associated maintenance of optionality? 2) it’s hard to step off the golden train the longer you stay on 3) if you have a sense you are not climbing the right mountain, are you simply wasting energy by not spending more time seeking out the right one?

So rather than the generally accepted linear path that is neatly laid out, might I recommend the scenic route?

I look at the scenic route as the time from age 22 to mid-30s-ish. This is the time to explore. Explore what lights a fire under you and gets you up in the morning ready to crush the day. What items do you find yourself gravitating toward, in terms of content consumed? What type of work causes hours to seem like seconds? Discover the answers to these questions, take mental or physical note of them, and triangulate with the experiences of others doing things that you have a hunch you may find cool. A lot of the time, the decision to stay or try something new is a two-way door. Since we regret the opportunities we do not go for more than those which we try, probably makes sense to give it a shot.

This is the window of opportunity where it could make sense to be a generalist. Try new things, explore different places, and be curious. Rather than looking to move directly upward, aim for a 45-80 degree trajectory. Continue to iterate until you find THE thing that you love or the scenic route winds to a close. Whichever comes first, lock in, and begin shooting for linearity, become a specialist. So long as you leave a trail of positive relationships, your safety net should continue to expand with opportunities to fall back on. As we say here at LTL, life is in the journey, not in the destination. So make sure you’re taking steps in the right direction, but ALWAYS make sure you’re enjoying the scenery along the way.

And what better day to enjoy the journey than on this fine Sunday.