Your 30’s are about finding what makes you happy
I’m halfway through listening to a podcast with David Rubenstein (one of America’s billionaires). What has struck me so far is his advice: find out what makes you happy in your 30’s. Then see where that overlaps with what you’re good at. Then that’s what you should set out to do. That’s the recipe for success.
He actually started his most financially lucrative and successful career at age 37. Which is super fascinating to me. I think we should talk about things like that more.
Luckily, through my current job, I’m able to start testing my hypothesis about what I’m good at. I have some goals for myself, and I want to see if I can hit them, systematically. And be able to repeat that. I think I can still do a better job of honing in on what piece of what I’m doing is my transferrable skill. I’ve written that down to kind of think about. But I think I have enough data points with me to figure it out, and anything that’s still a gap I can test at work/ask people I work with.
I think I’m still on the path to figuring out what brings me joy. I started asking myself this question a few years ago when NextDrop went down the gutter. Initially, I REALLY didn’t know. Like 0 clue. Which is sad, I know. And then I started figuring out things I wasn’t into. Which is also helpful in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, I can’t say I know with absolute certainty even today. But I am definitely closer to pinpointing it. I’m still trying to explore things and see what I like and what I don’t. I am trying to get into faster exploration by just talking to a bunch of people. My strategy now is just talking to as many people as I can, doing different things in whatever capacity I can, and observing my own emotions as I go through this process.
I’m hoping that if I keep doing that, something good will happen.
But I realise that’s what commercial success looks like. Skills + what makes you happy.
At least there’s a slight roadmap here.
Originally published at http://anulife.wordpress.com on March 16, 2021.
