What do I want to be when I grow up? For most of us, this is an existential question that will follow us wherever we go. We are dropped in this world by a mysterious stork, which does not leave with us any hints of why are we here, what are we supposed to do, and how are we going to do it. So we begin our quest for the discovery of this existential conundrum.
We first want to be a doctor, then a veterinarian, and maybe later an engineer. But at some point along the way we lose the childish concept of a profession and we suddenly plummet into the so called “real world”. We have seen so much TV, read so much sensationalist media, and heard so many stories posed by a “friend of a friend”, that we are unable to pursue our true passions anymore. Not only have we divorced that idealistic representation of our future self, we have made a conscious effort to convince ourselves otherwise.
That’s right… the goals and dreams that we think we have as adults are just ideas imprinted by society and reinforced by our own desire to be important, to belong to something greater. Further personal conflicts arise from the fact that these choices we make as adults are in fact praised and rewarded by society. Why wouldn’t I want to be an actor, if the outcome of such a career involves wealth, women, and a lot of fans? Why wouldn’t I want to be Michael Phelps if then I would be able to get away from marijuana charges and be on the cover of a cereal box? We can make the same case for most “hot careers” of our time: Investment Banking, NBA player, Rock star, etc.
But my question for you is the following: how can you really know that is what you want? If the potential outcome of your decision of pursuing such career is so materially rewarding, how can you know you are not tricking yourself into it? You see, the problem is not that you or I chose to pursue material gains, is that you and I truly believe that this pursuit is our calling. Furthermore, we disguise this pursuit and we instead call it a passion. Noble, isn’t it? I have a passion for making a lot of money, sleeping with many women, flying on my own private jet, and being on the cover of time magazine. Right…
Now this is not to say that some people are not truly passionate about careers that happen to have really good perks. But remember, I am not here to judge your career choices and your motives behind them. I am here to ask you one, simple, question. If you are pursuing one of these high profile careers, how can you know what you are chasing today is what you REALLY want to do?
The Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule, establishes that 80% of a process' output comes from 20% of the inputs. If we consider our job or school such a process, this would mean that it would take us 20% of our time to achieve 80% of the results we would achieve if we spent all of our time focused on such endeavor.
I had a professor in college, Weibo Gong, who was a big fan of this rule and would quote it on every lecture. His argument was that in order to succeed, we need to achieve a 100% results, and that the 80/20 rule acts as a deceiver, making us believe that excellence can be achieved with little work.
I found Gong's ideology to be common across most hard sciences, where there is one right answer and the only way to obtain it is to have a complete understanding of the material. Being an 'A' student, I accepted the fact that studying 5x (20% vs 100%) times more than other people was the only way to guarantee A's.
But the truth is, that I never studied that much. As a matter of fact, I probably did as much work as anybody else in our class. The key is to spend that 20% of your time the right way, so as to get all of that available 80%, and then add an extra 10% in order to make it to a 90% cumulative result which is generally equivalent to an A.
Now, if that worked in electrical engineering, where we need to be all-knowing in order to ace an exam, what would be the case with more abstract subjects? What about our job? One could say that making the best possible power point presentation for a meeting might be the underlying force behind a promotion. On the other hand, you could do 5 presentations of 'B' quality, and that way be more omnipresent and cover more ground.
Which one do you think is better and why?
