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Reflections on growth and career

December 5, 2024

Personal growth is an evolution not sublimation

This year, I started working on healing some trauma from my childhood. I started to see a therapist, journal and meditate. Before I started, I thought the process would be analogous to a software update; replace the buggy operating system with a new one. I thought this because when "personal growth" is described to you retrospectively, it is described as a catalytic change. A moment of realisation that results in a metamorphosis to a new and better version of yourself.

However personal growth is more akin to evolution. Whilst growth and healing begins with a moment realisation, the real "work" comes from making your heart feel something your brain knows to be true.

It is unclear what the process or "work" looks like before you start. Some part of me expected to start therapy and be handed a list of exercises I can do to fix me. But no such thing happened. I took this frustration to my friend Vasco with the expectation he would tell me I am doing something wrong and if I did this new thing it would all click into place. But he said the opposite - "You just have to do the work." This fuelled my frustration even more. What the fuck is "the work?"

What Vasco meant slowly became clear. Steve Jobs famously said you can only connect the dots looking backwards. This is true of personal growth as it is of life. For me, growth is exercise, mediation, therapy, journalling and speaking with friends. Growth is an emergent property of just doing the "work" and you can only figure out what that is by doing it. The chicken comes at the same time as the egg.

A good starting point is to ask yourself the following question. At what moments in your life are you most introspective? Is it during a workout? Or whilst speaking with friend? These moments are usually where growth begins so start there.

Addicts famously refer to themselves as always being in recovery, even after years of sobriety. What they have realised is the key to what I am getting to here. That the process of personal growth or recovery is just that, a process. The is no defined end. When we start, we begin a life long journey of 'becoming'. It is a process of evolution and emergence, one that can't be rushed or sped up. A process that just is.

Do more things

This philosophy assumes that there is a dislocation between what people work on and what they want to work on. It also assumes the world needs more founders.

It struck me recently that a large % of ones life is run on autopilot. What has felt like decisions I have made, are decisions that came with in the context of what society expected of me. Go to high school, do well in exams, go to college, get a first class degree and find a job. It is now well document the extent to which this philosophy is failing its former believers. I want to reflect on a new framework for navigating your 20s.

People in their 20s should think deeply about 2 primary factors regarding professional fulfilment:

  1. Their propensity to assume risk.
  2. What they are interested in.

Starting with 1. There are two types of jobs: high risk and low risk. High risk jobs are creators, founders, actors. There is a large variance between the upside and downside. Other jobs have a small risk amplitude; these are lawyers, consultants and bankers. High risk jobs are charatersied periods of low momentum and compensation, and then sudden periods of success and high momentum. Entrepreneurs may start sleeping on a friends sofa before finding growth or actors couch surfing between auditions before getting their big break.

Risk matter for two reasons: Firstly there are feelings that come from being in risky scenarios. Secondly, risk is also an indicator of other values. For example, people that value risk tend to be fuelled by the excitement and/or stress that comes from taking risk. They also value things like autonomy, freedom, ambition. Those that don't likely value stability, balance and regular income as well as avoiding the stress of high risk environments. The reason one might be dissatisfied with work is because he or she has picked a career that doesn't not align with these things.

Ask yourself, what is your propensity for risk? How do you manage risk across your life? The answer to these questions might be "I don't know" or more frequently you think you do, but you are wrong. Most people enter their early 20s not truly knowing where they sit on this spectrum because school suppresses curiosity and encourages conformity.

So how do you figure out your propensity for risk? Do more things.

Your risk tolerance is probably influenced by both genetic predisposition and environmental factors like upbringing. It will also vary with what you enjoy. The likelihood is you will be more willing to take risk on something you are excited to work on for 20 years. This means it is very important to find what you are interested in.

You risk tolerance will vary directly with interestingness. You understand what you are interested by doing more things. A good starting place is to ask yourself what got more interesting the more you did it? Interesting subjects are fractal as Paul Graham says. What have you done where you lost track of time?

The overall process looks something like this:

  1. Do more things
  2. Do those things get more interesting the more you do it? If no, start from 1.
  3. Are those things so interesting that you would be willing to take an outsized risk to spend the rest of your life working on them? If no, start from 1 or take a low risk job.
  4. If yes, start a company or take a proportionally similar risk on those things.

Fulfilment is the concentric overlap of risk, interestingness and compensation. You can only answer the first two with time on field. Try more, do more and hone in one what you find meaningful.