I don’t have a career path, and neither should you

Somewhere along the line we bought into the paradigm of the career path. This is the notion that careers should be characterized by a linear route leading to a known destination.

A path is a pragmatic vehicle. The same path can be followed by droves of people, and in fact it is more efficient if we all choose the same path.

Within this paradigm, I can assume that if I chart out a career path and am disciplined in adhering to it, I can expect to attain increasing status, position, and income.

The problem with the paradigm of the career path is that it rests on a flawed assumption: that people know now where they want to be in the future.

Yet, it is self-evident that as we live our lives, we learn more about ourselves, and become exposed to new ideas and opportunities that could drastically alter what we want in life.

I’m not saying that everyone should change careers constantly. After all, the things we value and enjoy may not change much through our lives, and it’s likely that certain career themes would remain constant.

I’m saying that maybe our wholesale acceptance of the career path paradigm causes us to turn down opportunities that will make us happier, simply because they do not advance us along "the path.” In fact, we may never even notice or consider these opportunities in the first place. Like horses with blinders, we can only move straight ahead.

Suppose that today I’m an entrepreneur, but I’ve always dreamed of going to China for a year to study the ancient art of Kung Fu, which strives to achieve balance through hard work.

Under the career path paradigm, I view the Kung Fu as a detour, a slower, non-optimized route to success. Kung Fu will not help me grow my company.

I prefer to think of my career as a dance or painting. When painting, it is acceptable to turn the brush in any direction at any time, or to another part of the canvas. There is no notion of forward or backward.

A dance or painting is a work of instinct and imagination, and most importantly, a unique manifestation of what’s inside. Careers should be like that too.

Under this paradigm, if I have Kung Fu in my heart, I ought to do Kung Fu. If, after one year of Kung Fu, I no longer want to be an entrepreneur, then I have saved years of my life that I might have spent working toward a false goal.

If, however, I still want to be an entrepreneur, I will pursue this goal without the regret that I subverted my Kung Fu dream to achieve it. And better yet, I will bring to bear the balance and discipline of Kung Fu in all that I do.

Why do you want to be an entrepreneur, anyway?

"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." – Winston Churchill¹

Around 2007, I decided that I should one day become an entrepreneur. I reasoned that I was a creative person, always thinking of ways to improve things around me. I was comfortable with uncertainty. I liked the idea of being my own boss, of being free.

Yet, it took me years to build the courage to start my own company.

What if my idea wasn’t good enough? What if I tapped out my savings? What if I became depressed working alone? What if I just wasn’t cut out for it? If I failed, would anyone still hire me?

As it turns out, I was asking the wrong questions.

Having finally started a company, I’ve learned that only one thing matters: Complete commitment to the outcome.

By "outcome" I don't mean an IPO, a sports car and a mansion. I mean that an entrepreneur must be completely committed to solving a particular problem for a particular group of people.

The commitment can come from a variety of sources – obsession, passion, need, discipline – but the completeness of that commitment is essential. In contrast, great ideas are relatively useless².

Imagine you are shipwrecked and stranded on an island. You have one flair. Your first survival strategy might be to shoot that flair in hopes of being spotted. But you will also try to think of a hundred other ways to survive. You are completely committed to the outcome (survival), and will try as many ideas as you possibly can to achieve it.

As an entrepreneur, your ideas will fail repeatedly. It’s a statistical certainty³. You will work without income indefinitely. You will mostly work alone. In other words, if you want to succeed, you will have to persevere in spite of being a poor, lonely, failure.

To summarize, I've learned two lessons: First, if you’re not completely committed to the outcome, then you will inevitably give up. Second, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should stop worrying about your idea, and do whatever it is you’re most passionate about. You’ll figure out the rest⁴. 

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

[1]   Why I hire people who fail, my inspiration for writing this
[2]   Amazing essay about ideas by Paul Graham, Y Combinator Founder
[3]   A web search with the terms “what percentage of entrepreneurs fail”
[4]   Stellar compilation of startup lessons that helps me figure things out