Randy Komisar is a good guy. He’s a Silicon Valley CEO. Listening to him speak is like being sat down by your down-to-earth uncle, who wants to give you career advice. Komisar is good at giving interesting advice about ‘following your passion’ without sounding trite or overly motivational. A lot of us get stuck on questions like “what is my (one) passion in life?!” Rather than worrying about the right answer to that question, he recommends thinking of your passions as a portfolio of interests. Then just try to match your interests to the opportunities in front of you. As long as you’re moving in the right direction you’re getting there.
(If you only have time to watch one of these, watch the first one).
In this second video, Komisar discusses staying balanced. The balance changes as your priorities change. He talks about money, opportunity and power (the 3 things people always wish they had in the career) don’t always come in the same package. We need to be careful that our career doesn’t take up too much of our lives and sometimes it’s worth it to say, sacrifice money and power in order to increase opportunities.
He also suggests that we should never put ourselves in a situation where we can’t say no, by handcuffing ourselves to too many obligations (i.e. having too many time or money expenses). Keep your eye on the ball (your values) and, as much as possible, give yourself the freedom to make the changes that respect the balance.
Reality check: When Komisar cut back in his life he went from being a full-time CEO to a doing part-time-CEO-temping. He made heaps of money as a CEO and, when he cut back, he made slightly-smaller heaps, but still probably more than you and me and everyone who will ever read this post combined. It’s easier making financial sacrifices when doing so doesn’t mean you’ll have to make any real sacrifices at all.
Still, I think he’s giving us some good advice here.
Seth Menachem is an LA director who, in his spare time, asks elderly strangers for advice. I grew up far away from my grandparents and I’ve lived overseas, away from my own parents, for a long time. Maybe this is why I love these clips from Life Advice from Old people.
These are two of my favourites:
:
Day-to-day I’m a very happy person, but I worry A LOT about making the right choices. I worry that I’m not spending enough time with my family. That I don’t write enough. That I don’t spend enough time outdoors or take the time to cook better meals. That I don’t know where in life I should settle down. That I work too hard. I think the good life is about sharing meaning and enjoyment, so to me what Seth is doing seems right on the money.
Also, listening to these clips makes me feel like when I was a kid and my dad would sit me down at our creeky old dining room table and tell me something important about life. It made me a stronger person. –well, everything except for that Birds and the Bees talk. That one confused me for years!
Visiting Dubai, a few years ago, I had a fascinating discussion with our cab driver. I asked him if he hoped his country’s economic growth would lead to democracy. He replied without hesitating, “No. We don’t want democracy here. The government takes care of us. They run the country; we don’t have to worry about it.” Here my wife pressed my hand in a way that said, why don’t you just leave it at that honey.
“Yes,” I said, “But if they change something and you don’t like it, or if they refuse to listen to you… you’ll have no power to do anything about it.” He smiled, but didn’t respond. I hadn’t convinced him.
We can all agree that freedom is a good thing. And more freedom = more happiness. But is this always the case? Recently I’ve been reading Psychologist Barry Schwartz’ The Paradox of Choiceand it makes me wonder. The book offers a variety of examples of how more freedom of choice can actually decrease our happiness. Let’s look at a couple of the reasons:
Firstly, there is “adaptation” –after making a decision we can take for granted the benefits involved with our choice. We adapt. The great new promotion we accept at work becomes new norm and we stop appreciating it. We adapt to the rate of pay and are quickly back where we started from. People generally return to the level of happiness that is normal for them.
Also, many options also makes choosing difficult. A lot of us agonize over choices and then focus on what we gave up when we accepted, for example one career path instead of another. (I.e. I should have gone to medical school!).
Don’t worry
So Schwartz doesn’t suggest trying to maximize our happiness by continuously looking for better options and things to change. Instead he recommends “satisficing” –looking for a job that is ‘good enough’ and then, he says, you should do your best to appreciate it
But wait!
Is Schwartz presenting a false-choice? Basically, he is saying we can either give-up (striving for a better life) and be happy (with what we have), or else we can struggle for something better for ourselves and be miserable. I went searching for a different approach, or at least some middle ground.
The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended. (Source)
This very practical approach balances pragmatism (don’t quit your day job) with the need to try to make things better for ourselves (take a risk or do something you we love as a hobby). We don’t need to strive for perfection in all areas at once. This is advice our cab driver would have appreciated.
Update: I just watched this old commercial from Monster.com and thought it would go form a good P.S. on this post. Don’t loose track of what you REALLY want to do.
Okay, one more video. This one won’t help you with your career at all. It’s just funny.
Or would you prefer to have an important, challenging job?
Timothy Ferris (in The 4 Hour Work Week) basically advocates the no-work option. What could be better than doing nothing all day and still getting paid? Personally I wouldn’t refuse being paid to laze around the pool of the luxiourious Candado Plaza Hotel (which is how and where I read the 4HWW). I know if I found myself retired I would want to go to a place like that and at least take 6 months to gatehr my thoughts.
However, retired people, those who actually have the option of lazing around as much as they want to, say they’d rather be working. (Well, 78% of New Zealand retirees say that anyway.) They say they would prefer to work, as long as they job allowed them to work with more flexibly.
I find this just a little bit surprising. I can understand wanting to make yourself useful, but why not take on a non-job or two instead? I’m looking forward to retirement as a time to build community, indulge my creativity and maybe catch up on my life list. Not to go back to work.
Gretchen Rubin over at the Happiness Project got some insight on this from American Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. O’Connor says that the secret of happiness is simply this: Work extremely hard at something worth doing. That’s it. It’s not relationships. It’s not peace of mind. Do good work and the good life will follow. I’m not sure I agree entirely. Statements like that remind me of the episode of Cheers where one of them sagely explains what life is all about, “the meaning of life my friends: comfortable shoes.” Comfortable shoes are good, but maybe there is just a little more to life.
But I still can’t completely figure out why New Zealand retirees don’t want to stay retired. A recent 60 Minutes news show discussed the fact that Millennials (Generation Y) make exceptionally difficult employees. They are a new breed, say the commentators. They refuse to work if they don’t understand the purpose of the work. They won’t do busy work, even when working for minimum wage. They need to be negotiated with. The show, clearly appealing more to the over-40 crowd, presented this as entirely unreasonable. Where do these young people get the nerve to try to work on their own terms?!
No one wants to waste their lives doing meaningless work.
It seems that the answer is not about working hard or not; it’s the reason for the work that matters.
Maybe it’s not actually freedom that we long for at the summit of our careers. For most of us it’s not really about money either. The real challenge is about finding work that we feel is meaningful, so we don’t waste our time –in retirement, and even before we retire.
So the question becomes: how can we find or create some meaningful work?
A good place to start is to try to lead a tribe, try to gather around you people who have similar interests and work with them toward something worthwhile. Or, if you’re more of a lone wolf, get stuck into your own creative practice. We should all make sure that, by the time we reach retirement, we are seriously involved in work we find exhilarating and important.
I love talking to people about their aspirations. I really do. But there is a dark side to goals and what we often think of as “motivation.”
I have a lot of goals. Last week I confessed that I wanted to be a doctor, a pilot, a CEO, and a Senator before I die. I admit that I was at the pub at the time. But I am sure that I will likely not do any of these things. I don’t have a problem with this though. I like listing these as goals anyway.
The problem I have with goals is something different. I have a problem with their power.
Growing up I learned a lot form motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and Steven Covey. I learned from them that:
Anything I wanted to achieve, if I really wanted it and I was willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary, I could achieve. For this reason they say quite rightly that the hardest part of achieving something should come in the decision-making, right at the beginning. When you understand the power of goals, you realize not to set them lightly.
Many people go wrong by setting too few goals. Many people underestimate themselves and therefore set goals half-heartedly.
But for those who have confidence in themselves and set challenging goals, there is a hidden dangers.
Tunnel Vision
Focus on one thing, necessitates less focus on other things. Businesses experience this all the time. A recent Boston Globe article discussed how General Motors’ failure was partly the result of company goal setting. All of GM doggedly focused on regaining the 29% market share they had once held. Focusing on this meant they ignored profits. They slashed sales prices when they should have cut costs. Everything became about achieving the almighty 29%. So, part of the power of goals is that they are non-reasonable. Once agreed the goal itself becomes the reason. Naysayers at GM (and there must have been a few) weren’t heard because by questioning the goal they seemed to be talking nonsense.
I had a friend who was so obsessed with her goals that she seemed to be running on autopilot. It got in the way of her seeing other possibilities, much like what happened at GM.
Don’t get me wrong. Goals can be great. And I really do want to achieve everything I can list, that I might enjoy. I would like to gain every possible skill. I would love to speak Spanish for example. And maybe one day you’ll find me performing surgery on a fellow Sentator, in Spain, while flying. Maybe.
