Should I Follow My Skill Or My Passion?

00:00:00.000 | All right.

00:00:06.640 | We have a question here from Career Opportunist who says,

00:00:12.020 | "Are there times where it is worthwhile to follow intimations of your career

00:00:17.840 | interest, even if you take non-trivial cuts in your career capital outside of

00:00:22.080 | the corner cases you've already mentioned in your book so good they can't ignore

00:00:24.760 | you?"

00:00:24.960 | Right.

00:00:26.240 | There's some elaboration here.

00:00:27.360 | So we can get some context to this question.

00:00:29.960 | So Career Opportunist clarifies that he is a back-end software engineer at a

00:00:34.800 | large, well-known internet company who has built up quite a bit of career

00:00:37.760 | capital in that role.

00:00:39.400 | He then goes on to say, "My core interest in college, however, were in front-end

00:00:45.360 | client-facing work as opposed to back-end software.

00:00:48.480 | I'm not tied to a particular job or passion.

00:00:51.000 | I just want to experience building user-facing software as opposed to just

00:00:54.600 | behind-the-scenes code."

00:00:58.800 | So he says, "I can either choose to become a more proficient back-end engineer, but

00:01:03.960 | it does feel like a less interesting route for me.

00:01:05.840 | But I could do that and focus instead on the opportunities to negotiate lifestyle

00:01:10.520 | improvements."

00:01:11.000 | All right.

00:01:11.400 | So I don't have a definitive answer, but I'll tell you my instinct here.

00:01:15.360 | The grudging thing you put at the end, like I guess what I could do is even

00:01:21.520 | though maybe front-end stuff seems more interesting, I could get better at

00:01:25.960 | back-end engineering and focus more on lifestyle improvements.

00:01:28.720 | I actually think that's probably the right answer.

00:01:30.360 | And it might not be the answer you want to hear from me, but I think at this stage

00:01:36.720 | of your career, the right thing to do, I'm going to guess, you haven't told me, but

00:01:40.680 | I'm going to guess you're at that critical stage, this roughly quarter-life stage in

00:01:45.400 | your late 20s, early 30s, where you're no longer starting out, you have skill, you

00:01:49.440 | have talent, you begin to have some options, but you're also not at that mid-life

00:01:52.400 | stage where there's other things going on in your life.

00:01:54.120 | I would say at this stage, this is an important time to do lifestyle-centric

00:01:58.400 | career planning.

00:01:59.240 | I'll explain what that is in a second, but what I think is going on instead is

00:02:05.800 | you're feeling a bit adrift because again, you've got to that quarter-life stage

00:02:09.320 | where you found the job, you found the skill, you have some stability, you have

00:02:12.800 | some ability, and now you're thinking what's next.

00:02:16.520 | And in our culture, and especially American culture, when I say our culture,

00:02:20.600 | we have this instinct that the content of our job is going to be the key

00:02:26.360 | driver of our satisfaction.

00:02:27.640 | So when you feel that initial tinge of malaise, because you've reached a plateau,

00:02:32.400 | your culturally trained mind immediately says, well, maybe if we shifted a little

00:02:39.000 | bit, the content of our work, we would no longer be adrift, we would break through

00:02:43.480 | the malaise.

00:02:43.960 | So maybe it's back in software is the issue.

00:02:46.280 | And the reason why I'm feeling this malaise is that I really should be doing

00:02:49.200 | front-end software.

00:02:50.040 | I think if you make that shift, it would be kind of interesting, but you'd be back

00:02:52.800 | in the same place in a couple of years.

00:02:53.920 | So now is the time to do lifestyle-centric career planning, which is what I think is

00:02:58.120 | the answer to that feeling that so many standard knowledge worker types feel

00:03:03.160 | around this part in their life.

00:03:04.280 | Now I've talked about this before, but the basics of lifestyle-centric career

00:03:07.280 | planning is that you identify what do I want my day-to-day life to be like in all

00:03:15.720 | of its attributes, not what do I want my work to be like, what do I want my actual

00:03:19.080 | life to be like?

00:03:20.240 | And I want you to think about things like, where am I living?

00:03:23.440 | Am I in the countryside?

00:03:25.600 | Am I in a skyscraper?

00:03:26.880 | Am I in a small town?

00:03:28.360 | Am I helping my neighbors build a barn?

00:03:33.040 | Or is it I am having people over, commonly just shooting the breeze out on a front

00:03:39.040 | porch while people walk by?

00:03:40.800 | Or is it I'm at a underground bar scene where there's interesting new poetry being

00:03:48.280 | done?

00:03:48.560 | Whatever.

00:03:48.960 | What is my day like?

00:03:49.800 | What am I doing?

00:03:50.480 | Where do I live?

00:03:51.480 | How much am I working?

00:03:52.760 | Am I getting after it or is work a small part of my job?

00:03:56.280 | Am I seasonal?

00:03:57.360 | Am I spending six months a year not even working at all and doing other types of

00:04:00.680 | things and traveling around?

00:04:02.200 | These type of questions.

00:04:04.120 | What am I doing with my time?

00:04:05.400 | What about my character?

00:04:06.680 | What is my role in the community?

00:04:08.160 | What is the philosophies by which I live?

00:04:11.360 | How deep is my existential grasp of my life?

00:04:16.400 | All of these type of questions.

00:04:19.080 | You fix this lifestyle.

00:04:20.400 | You feel it and you taste it and you imagine a typical week or day and something that

00:04:25.360 | really hits those intimations of, yes, this is right.

00:04:27.960 | And then you say, great, what are the paths to get there?

00:04:31.520 | And that's where you build your plan.

00:04:33.600 | And work then fits into that plan.

00:04:35.320 | And work then becomes a mechanism by which you make progress towards this lifestyle

00:04:40.560 | that pushes all of these right buttons and really resonates.

00:04:43.680 | And that is where, as you enter this quarter-life period, your focus goes.

00:04:47.040 | Aiming the ship that is your life towards the port that is a lifestyle that is deeper,

00:04:52.920 | that resonates with you, whatever those answers might be.

00:04:55.160 | And again, I keep emphasizing different people have different answers to these

00:05:00.360 | questions. It could look very different depending on the people.

00:05:02.480 | That's where I'd want you to put your energy.

00:05:04.800 | Now, if you do this exercise eight times out of 10, you're going to find, oh, if I

00:05:09.440 | have a lot of career capital in something like back in software design, massively

00:05:13.640 | increasing that capital, because it's easy to take good capital and make it great than

00:05:17.320 | it is to go from no capital to good capital, massively increasing that capital

00:05:20.640 | quickly and using that as a lever to take control of aspects of my life and career is

00:05:24.880 | almost always going to be the right thing to do.

00:05:26.680 | An example comes to mind from my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, which you

00:05:31.840 | mentioned, there was a very similar character in that book, someone in a very

00:05:36.080 | similar situation to you.

00:05:37.400 | This was Lulu.

00:05:39.960 | And she was a back-end programmer.

00:05:42.200 | I believe she was databases, more like a database programmer designer, but similar

00:05:47.200 | idea, not front-end facing, worked for financial sectors.

00:05:50.880 | As she got better and better at that, she said, what did I want my life to be like?

00:05:57.520 | And she used that as a lever to build a really cool lifestyle where she did six

00:06:01.000 | months on, six months off.

00:06:02.040 | So she left the company where she was.

00:06:04.760 | She went to a consulting role.

00:06:05.840 | She was heavily in demand because she was great on this.

00:06:07.920 | She would do six months on.

00:06:09.440 | That's roughly enough time to do one or two engagements.

00:06:12.400 | She lived relatively cheaply, right?

00:06:17.160 | With her wife in Jamaica Plain.

00:06:19.600 | It was a cool, it's a cool neighborhood outside of Boston.

00:06:22.000 | They had this cool old house that they were, they were renovating.

00:06:24.040 | And they weren't living lavishly.

00:06:26.560 | They weren't living in, let's go buy a really large, expensive house.

00:06:29.040 | So then you could spend the other six months doing interesting things and

00:06:31.400 | scuba diving.

00:06:32.320 | She got a pilot's license.

00:06:33.560 | Her family was from Thailand.

00:06:34.800 | So she would go do extended visits there.

00:06:37.360 | And it was just a really interesting lifestyle, but she figured out what she

00:06:41.280 | wanted.

00:06:41.800 | And then she said, what's the best way to get there?

00:06:44.680 | Oh, I'm a great database developer.

00:06:46.680 | I can wield that to get where I want to get.

00:06:48.920 | So that is what I'm going to suggest for opportunities is do the lifestyle

00:06:52.160 | centric career planning, thinking and work backwards to say, how do I get there?

00:06:57.520 | And then see where that takes you.

00:06:59.760 | So again, it's likely it might take you, uh, we'll tell you almost certainly take

00:07:05.400 | the skill you have out for a spin and use it to build a cool life.

00:07:07.680 | It might tell you, however, when you do this, like you want to be running a

00:07:10.360 | small startup that's front end facing and you live kind of cheap and you're

00:07:13.440 | living somewhere kind of cool.

00:07:14.360 | So maybe it would put you to front end facing work, but it would be pushing you

00:07:17.280 | there for a reason.

00:07:19.360 | This is part of a big picture, not just an instinct that maybe this would make me

00:07:22.960 | happier.

00:07:23.360 | The final thing I will say, if you're interested in front end design, just as

00:07:28.360 | an intriguing intellectual challenge, even if this exercise has you stick with

00:07:34.000 | back end programming and using that as your main leverage, your main career

00:07:37.240 | capital lever, do some front end work as a hobby.

00:07:40.160 | Build a front end facing website that you do as a side hustle or a side project

00:07:47.680 | that you build up and build up those skills, build it around something you're

00:07:51.720 | really interested in.

00:07:52.920 | You know, like you're a, uh, some sort of like super fan of the matrix or

00:07:58.320 | something like this.

00:07:58.960 | I just watched that movie last night.

00:08:00.160 | That's what I'm thinking about it.

00:08:00.960 | Uh, Jesse's shaking his head.

00:08:03.000 | Um, you're a super fan of the matrix or something like this and whatever, or

00:08:06.360 | you're, you're really into some.

00:08:07.800 | I'm not good with this dungeons and dragons or something.

00:08:10.920 | I don't know, but you know what I'm saying?

00:08:12.680 | Like, okay, build it about something interesting, fun, a community that you

00:08:15.320 | get some depth out of, uh, whatever it is.

00:08:17.800 | And you could get that experience as well.

00:08:19.160 | All right.

00:08:19.600 | So that's a long answer to a short question, because I really wanted to get

00:08:22.240 | to that bigger point, which is.

00:08:23.640 | I'm increasingly a big believer in this idea that stage one of your career is

00:08:30.040 | figuring out how to be a adult in the world who's dependable and gets things

00:08:34.360 | done and starts to develop a real skill to get real career capital stage to.

00:08:38.840 | Deploy that capital towards a vision of the ideal lifestyle.

00:08:43.280 | And then stage three is actually probably going to be much less career focused.

00:08:47.240 | You're in this lifestyle.

00:08:48.360 | It's going to be much more about yourself and self-discovery.

00:08:51.160 | I mean, I think it sets you up for the classic midlife crisis for it, not to be

00:08:55.440 | a crisis, but to be a time of actual discovery.

00:08:57.400 | So that's my advice.

00:08:58.880 | Lifestyle-centered career planning underrated.

00:09:01.720 | Can't emphasize it enough.

00:09:03.680 | [Music]

Should I Follow My Skill Or My Passion?

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