[Wait But Why] 职业选择 キャリアの選び方（実際に自分に合うもの）

[anonymous_coward]

Original:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html

Below is the GPT translation:

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Hey, readers! Before we start, a few words:

This article is about a topic I’ve always wanted to write about: careers. Society tells us a lot about what we should want in a career, what opportunities might be there—this is strange, because I’m pretty sure society knows very little about these things. When it comes to careers, society is like that great uncle who traps you on holidays and launches into a 15‑minute, almost incoherent unsolicited advice monologue. You’re drifting off for most of it because you know he knows almost nothing about what he’s saying, and everything he says sounds like a 45‑year‑old cliché. Society is that great uncle, and traditional wisdom is his long‑winded lecture. The only difference is that, in this case, we’re not treating it as background noise; we’re listening intently to every word and then making important career decisions based on what he says. It’s truly a weird thing we do.

This article isn’t really giving you career advice—rather, it’s a framework I think can help you make career decisions that better reflect who you are, what you want, and what our rapidly changing career landscape looks like. You’re not an expert on this, but you’re definitely more qualified than our clueless collective great uncle to figure out what’s best for you. For those who haven’t started their careers yet, aren’t sure what they want to do, or for those who are mid‑career and unsure if they’re on the right path, I hope this article helps you hit the reset button on your thinking and get some clarity.

Finally, publishing this feels amazing. It’s been way too long. Last year was a huge disappointment for me and for everyone who loves Wait But Why—lots of ideas accumulated but never turned into satisfying blog posts (I spent most of last year writing another longer article). I hope this “WBW Dark Age” is ending soon, because I really want to interact with you all here. Thanks to the small group that has always supported us—their patience and generosity are just unbelievable.

– Tim

[anonymous_coward]

Life Trajectory So Far

For most of us, childhood is a bit like a river, and we are like little tadpoles.

We didn’t choose this river. We simply woke up one day to find ourselves already on a path set by our parents, society, and the environment. We are told the river’s rules, how to swim, and what the goals should be. Our task is not to contemplate our own path, but to succeed on this road according to the standards of success defined for us.

For many of us — I guess for many Wait But Why readers — our childhood river eventually flows into a pond called college. We may have some choice about which pond we enter, but in the end, most college ponds aren’t that different from each other.

In the pond, we have more breathing room and some leeway to develop more specific interests. We begin to reflect, looking toward the pond’s shore — the starting point of the real world and where we will spend the rest of our lives. This usually brings about some complex emotions.

Then, 22 years after waking up in the rapid river, we are pushed out of the pond, and the world tells us to create our own life.

There are several issues here. First, at that moment, you have almost no skills, knowledge, and lack many other things:

But before you can solve the generally useless problems you have, there is an even bigger issue — the pre‑set road has ended. Kids in school are a bit like employees of a company, while others are the CEOs. But in the real world, no one is the CEO of your life or career path — except yourself. And you have spent your whole life being a professional student, which leaves you with no experience being the CEO of anything. So far, you have only been responsible for micro‑decisions — “How do I succeed in my student work?” — and now you suddenly also hold the key to macro‑decisions, facing pressure‑filled big questions such as “Who am I?”, “What matters in life?”, “What choices do I have, which path should I choose, or even how to forge a path?” When we left school for the last time, the macro guidance we were accustomed to was abruptly taken away, leaving us standing there, bewildered, not knowing how to respond.

Then time passes. We eventually take a road. That road becomes the story of our life.

At the end of our lives, when we look back, we can see the whole picture of our life from a bird’s‑eye view.

When scientists study people at the end of life and their feelings about life, they often find that many experience deep regrets. I think these regrets largely stem from the fact that most of us were never truly taught how to forge a path in childhood, and most of us don’t improve in this regard as adults, leading many, when reflecting on their life’s road, to find that it doesn’t truly align with who they are and the world they inhabit.

So this is an article about forging a path. Let’s take 30 minutes, before the end, to pause, look at the road we are on, where it seems to lead, and make sure it is meaningful.

[anonymous_coward]

Chef and Head Chef — Review

In the past, I wrote about the crucial distinction between “first‑principles reasoning” and “analogical reasoning”—or, as I call it, the difference between a “head chef” and a “chef.” Since writing that piece, I’ve noticed this distinction everywhere, and I’ve thought about it roughly two million times in my life.

The idea is that first‑principles reasoning is like reasoning as a scientist. You take core facts and observations and piece them together into a conclusion, a bit like a head chef handling raw ingredients and trying to turn them into something delicious. By piecing them together, the head chef eventually writes a new recipe. The other kind of reasoning—analogical reasoning—occurs when you observe how something has already been done and basically copy it, perhaps making a few personal tweaks here or there—a bit like a chef following an existing recipe.

A chef who merely copies a recipe verbatim and a head chef who invents independently are, of course, two extremes. But for any particular part of your life that involves reasoning and decision‑making, regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, your reasoning process can usually be reduced to being fundamentally like a head chef or fundamentally like a chef. Creation versus replication. Originality versus conformity.

Becoming a head chef requires a lot of time and effort—and that makes sense, because you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel; you’re inventing it for the first time. Piecing together conclusions is like navigating a mysterious forest blindfolded, always accompanied by many failures in the form of trial‑and‑error. Becoming a chef is much easier, more direct, and less uncomfortable. In most cases, being a head chef is a waste of time and comes with a high opportunity cost, since time on Earth is extremely scarce. Right now, I’m wearing J. Crew jeans, a plain T‑shirt, a hoodie, and Allbirds shoes because I’m trying to fit in. In my life I look around, see people who look like me, and then buy a bunch of clothes that look like what they wear. That makes sense—clothes don’t matter to me; they’re not how I choose to express my personality. So for me, pursuing fashion is a part of life where I can perfectly use a reasoning shortcut (being a chef).[2]

[2] Also, hoodies are comfortable, Allbirds shoes feel like you’re constantly wearing socks, and jeans are magical pants—you don’t need to wash them at all unless you spill something brightly colored on them.

But there are parts of life that are truly important—such as where you choose to live, what kind of friends you make, whether you want to get married and to whom, whether you want children and how to raise them, or how you prioritize lifestyle choices.

Planning your career path is definitely one of those very important things. Let’s list the obvious reasons:

Time

For most of us, a career (including ancillary career time such as commuting and thinking about work) will consume roughly 50,000 to 150,000 hours. Currently, a long‑lived human life is about 750,000 hours. If you subtract childhood (about 175,000 hours) and the time in your adult life spent sleeping, eating, exercising, caring for your human pets, chores, and general life maintenance (about 325,000 hours), you’re left with 250,000 “meaningful adult hours.”[3] Thus, a typical career will occupy 20% to 60% of your meaningful adult time—not something to take lightly.

[3] Interesting meals and exercise also fall into this category.

Quality of Life

Your career not only affects the time you spend working, but also profoundly influences your non‑working time. For those who haven’t yet acquired wealth through past earnings, marriage, or inheritance, a career is also our means of making a living. The specifics of your career usually largely determine where you live, how flexible your life is, what you can do in your spare time, and sometimes even who you end up marrying.

Influence

Beyond occupying most of your time and supporting the rest of it, a career is also your primary way of exerting influence. Every person’s life affects thousands of other lives in myriad ways, and those altered lives go on to affect their own thousands of lives. We can’t test this, but I’m fairly certain you could pick any 80‑year‑old alive today, travel back 80 years to when they were a baby, toss that baby in the trash, and then return to the present—you’d find countless things have changed. All lives have a massive impact on the world and the future—but the type of impact you ultimately generate is largely under your control, depending on your values and where you invest your energy. No matter which direction your career path takes, the world will change because of it.

Identity

In our childhood, people asked us what we wanted to become when we grew up to inquire about our career plans. As adults, we introduce our careers by telling others what we are. We don’t say “I work in law”—we say “I am a lawyer.” This may be an unhealthy way of thinking about a career, but in many societies today a person’s career is also a major part of their identity. That’s a fairly important thing.

So yes—your career path is not like my lousy sweatshirt. It really is extremely important and absolutely belongs in the realm of “make sure you treat it like a head chef would.”

[anonymous_coward]

Your Career Map

This brings you into focus. I’m not entirely clear about your specific situation. But it’s very likely that you are in a certain blue area—

—which means your career path is still in progress [4].

[4] I personally hope my retirement life can be as fulfilling and vibrant as my career, which means I need to continue reflecting on my life path in the retirement orchard.

Whether you have not yet started your career, or are already deep into it, deep in your mind (or perhaps right at the front) there is a “career plan” map.

We can divide map holders into three major categories—each well represented at the river, pond, shore, and at every stage of adult life.

The first type of people look at the map and see a huge, anxiety‑inducing question mark.

These people feel hesitant about their career path. They are told to follow their passion, but they don’t feel particularly passionate about anything. They are told to let their strengths guide them, but they are unsure what they are best at. They may have felt they had answers in the past, but they have changed and are no longer sure who they are or where to go.

Another type of people see a clear, definite arrow; they are confident about the right direction—but their steps go in different directions. They live in one of the most common sources of human suffering, a career path they know in their heart is wrong.

Lucky people feel they know where they want to go and believe they are moving toward that direction.

But even these people should stop and ask themselves: “Who actually drew this arrow? Is it really me?” The answer may be confusing.

I am fairly certain all these people can benefit from reflecting on their career path.

Well, but why do you think you can help me with career reflection? You make a living drawing simple sketches.

That’s a very reasonable question. Whenever I choose a writing topic, I always ask myself, “Am I qualified to write about this?” Below are the reasons I decided to write on this topic:

1. Over the past 20 years, I have spent most of my time continuously analyzing my career path.
2. My career path has undergone many twists—from wanting to be a movie star at age 7, to wanting to be president at 17, to wanting to write film scores at 22, to wanting to be an entrepreneur at 24, to wanting to write a musical at 29, and most recently wanting to be someone involved in writing.
3. After spending most of my life feeling lost about my career path, I now actually enjoy my work. This may change, but being able to compare the decision processes that led me into confusion or frustration with those that guided me toward a more fulfilling direction has given me insight into where people usually go wrong.
4. Besides my own story, I have been fortunate to closely observe the stories of more than a dozen of my closest friends. My friends also seem as obsessed with their career paths as I am, so by observing their paths and repeatedly discussing them with them along the way, I broadened my perspective on this topic, helping me distinguish lessons that apply only to me personally from those that are more universal.
5. Finally, this article is not about which careers are better or worse than others, or which career values are more meaningful or meaningless—many social scientists and self‑help authors have good data on that, and I am not one of them. Instead, this is a framework that I believe can help career‑path reflectors see their situation more clearly and honestly, and understand what truly matters to them. This framework has been very effective for me, so I think it may help others as well.

Now, you have re‑examined your career plan map, and any arrows that may be on it, put it down and store it away. We will return to it at the end of the article. Now is the time to dive deep—let’s start thinking from the beginning. From first principles.

In the cook‑chef post, I designed a simple framework illustrating how a head chef makes major career choices. Its core is a simple Venn diagram.

The first part of the diagram is the “Want Box”, which contains all the careers you find attractive.

The second part of the diagram is the “Reality Box”. The Reality Box contains all the careers that are realistically achievable—derived by comparing your potential in a field with the general difficulty of succeeding in that field.

The overlapping area contains your optimal career path choices—the set of arrows you should consider drawing on your career planning map. We can call this the “choice pool”.

It’s simple. But in reality, accurately filling out these boxes is much harder than it looks. For this chart to be effective, it must be as close to reality as possible, and to achieve that we need to lift the veil of the subconscious and dig deep. Let’s start with the “Want Box”.

[anonymous_coward]

深度分析，第一部分：你的“想要框”

“想要框”最难的地方在于，你想要的东西很多——或者说，你有很多不同的面向，每个面向都有自己的需求和恐惧。而且，由于某些动机与其他动机存在冲突，你不可能、按定义来说，得到你所有的想要。追求一个想要的东西，意味着你不追求其他的东西，有时候，甚至意味着你必须直接反对其他的东西。想要框是一个妥协的游戏。

渴望章鱼

为了正确审视“想要框”，你需要思考自己在职业中渴望的是什么，然后深入剖析它。幸运的是，我们有一个能帮忙的人物：渴望章鱼。

每个人的脑袋里都有属于自己的渴望章鱼 [5]。每个人的渴望章鱼的具体形式会有所不同，但人们其实也并没有那么不同，我敢打赌，很多人有着非常相似的渴望与恐惧（尤其是考虑到《Wait But Why》的读者们往往有很多共同点）。

[5] 你知道他其实是一个渴望五触角章鱼，我知道他其实是一个渴望五触角章鱼，他也知道自己其实是一个渴望五触角章鱼——但我们就不深究了。

首先需要考虑的是，渴望有着截然不同的世界——每一个世界都生活在一个触角上。这些触角常常彼此不和。

事情还会变得更糟。每个触角由许多不同的渴望和它们伴随的恐惧组成，而这些渴望和恐惧之间也常常存在巨大的冲突。

让我们仔细看看每个触角，看看究竟发生了什么。

个人渴望触角 (Personal) 可能是最难概括的一个——它非常独特，每个人的个人渴望都不同。它反映了我们的个性和价值观，并承担着人类最复杂、最具挑战性的需求之一：自我实现。它还需要处理的不仅是我们现在的自我，还有很多过去的自我。7 岁时的梦想、12 岁时理想化的自我、17 岁时的秘密希望，以及你当前自我的不断变化的激情，都在个人触角上，彼此争夺着想要的东西，每个自我都在为没有得到自己想要的东西而对你发火，并准备让你因自己的失望和厌恶感到非常糟糕。此外，个人触角有时还会显现出你对死亡的恐惧，渴望留下自己的印记，获得伟大成就之类的。这就是为什么你不会看到太多亿万富翁甘心在沙滩上度过余生，悠闲地喝鸡尾酒——这是一个需求极强的触角。

然而，个人触角也是常常被忽视的触角。因为在很多情况下，它是最让人不愿意去追求的渴望；因为这个触角的恐惧不会立刻显现——它们会悄悄地从背景中渗透出来；而且，个人触角常常容易在职业生涯的早期被其他触角那强烈的动物性情绪所压倒。这种忽视可能会导致一个人在事后感到极大的遗憾。例如，一个非常成功但又非常不快乐的人，往往背后就是个人渴望触角的未实现。他们可能会认为自己在错误的领域获得了成功。

社会渴望触角 (Social) 可能是我们最原始、最具动物性的部分，其核心驱动力源自我们部落进化的过去。在这个触角上，栖息着许多奇怪的生物。

正如我们 之前 在这个博客中讨论的那样，我们每个人脑袋里都有一只社会生存猛犸象，它极度关注别人对我们的看法。这意味着它渴望被接纳、融入和受欢迎，同时也对尴尬、负面评价和不赞成感到极度恐惧。它真的非常非常想成为群体中的一员，真的非常非常不想被排除在外。不过，它其实 挺可爱 的。

接着是你的自我 (ego)，它是一个类似的角色，但需求更强烈。你的自我不仅仅想要被接纳，它还想被欣赏、渴望和宠爱——理想情况下，能得到大众的关注。比被不喜欢更令它不安的是被忽视。它希望自己是重要的、相关的，并且被广泛认知。

还有其他一些角色在周围徘徊。在社会触角的其他地方，有一个小法官拿着小槌子，如果它觉得人们没有公平地评价你——如果你没有得到应有的赞赏，它会非常生气。这个法官特别在意别人是否意识到你认为自己有多聪明、多有才华。法官也特别喜欢怀恨在心——这也是很多人为了向那些从未相信过自己的人证明自己的动力所在。

最后，我们中的一些人可能会在社会触角上发现一只充满爱的小狗，它最想做的事情就是取悦它的主人，无法忍受让主人失望的想法。这个可爱的生物有一个问题，那就是它的主人不是你，而是一个对你有着巨大心理影响的人，若不小心，你可能会把整个职业生涯都奉献给取悦他们，让他们为你骄傲。（很可能是父母。）

生活方式渴望触角 lifestyle 主要想要的是让每个星期二都成为美好的一天。比如说，一个非常愉快、享受的一天——拥有充足的自由时间、自我照顾、放松和奢侈的生活。

它也关心你的整体生活能尽可能美好——就生活方式触角而言，你应该能够按照自己的意愿去做任何事情，想做的时候做，喜欢的人陪伴着你。生活应该充满乐趣和丰富的经历，同时也应该平稳流畅，不需要太多辛勤的工作，尽可能少遇到挫折。

问题是，即便你非常重视自己的生活方式渴望，想要同时让整个触角都感到满足也相当困难。触角中那部分只想坐着放松的需求，会阻碍你努力工作以建立一种能够提供长期灵活性、创造财富的职业，这样才能让生活变得奢华、舒适且充满享受。而触角中那部分仅在未来可预测时才感到安心的需求，又会排斥那些可能带来长期自由的职业道路，正是这种自由另一部分触角所渴望的。想要无压力生活的你，与渴望像理查德·布兰森一样在纳米比亚的悬崖上滑翔的你，根本无法和谐共处。

道德渴望触角 moral 认为你渴望章鱼的其他触角简直是一群自私的家伙——每个都比下一个更加自我中心和放纵。道德触角的部分看着周围，看到一个需要修复的巨大世界；它们看到成千上万和你一样值得拥有美好生活的人，只是恰好出生在更差的环境中；它们看到前方一个不确定的未来，地球上的生命在乌托邦和反乌托邦之间摇摆不定——如果我们能把其他触角放到一边，我们实际上可以推动未来朝着正确的方向发展。其他触角幻想着如果你银行账户里有十亿美元，你会做些什么，而道德触角则幻想着如果你有十亿美元可以用来改变世界，你能产生什么样的影响。

不用说，其他触角都觉得道德触角让人难以忍受。它们也无法理解纯粹为了慈善而做慈善——它们会想，“别人不是我，那我为什么要花时间和精力去帮助他们？”——但它们可以理解为了自己的动机而做慈善。虽然道德触角和生活方式触角往往直接冲突，但有时其他触角会找到共同点——社会触角可能非常喜欢慈善事业，如果它能让你赢得社会圈层的尊重和钦佩，而某些人个人触角可能会在慈善事业中找到它渴望的意义或自我价值。

这就是为什么，当你做一些慈善事业——或者任何利他行为时——你脑海中会有几种不同的想法。想要得到正当社会认可的部分在你的社会触角上；认为“天啊，我是个好人”的部分在你的个人触角上；而真正喜欢看到你所帮助的人或群体变得更好的是在你的道德触角上。同样，不为他人做任何事也会伤害到你多个触角——道德触角因为内疚和难过，社会触角因为这可能让别人认为你是个自私或贪婪的人，个人触角因为这可能降低你的自尊心。

你的“实际需求”practical 触手

你的“实际需求”触手觉得这一切都很好——但它也想指出，今天是 3 月 31 日，明天你的房租就要到期了，而有趣的是，它登录了你的银行账户，发现里面的钱实际上比房东在接下来的 34 小时内需要的钱要少。是的，它知道你在周四存了那张支票，按理说明天早上应该会到账，但你的“实际需求”触手也清楚地记得，就在上个月，所有的触手都承诺会做出一些牺牲，以至少建立一点银行账户的缓冲，这样每个月付房租就不会变得如此令人压力山大了。你的“实际需求”触手还不禁注意到，你的“社交需求”触手上周六主动为酒吧里和你一起去的九个人买了一轮酒，以便让他们觉得你是个有品位、慷慨的人；而你的“生活方式”触手选择租了一个对于现在靠工资过日子的人来说似乎相当豪华的公寓；还有，你朋友六个月前开始的那个百吉饼配送服务的消息突然变得悄无声息，而你的“道德需求”触手曾高兴地投资了 2500 美元帮助它起步；哦对了，与此同时，你的“个人需求”触手让所有人汗流浃背地同时做着两份喜剧写作的实习工作，结果这两份工作的收入加起来还不如你大学二年级时在 Jekyll & Hyde 餐厅扮成埃及女巫当服务员赚得多。

从根本上说，你的“实际需求”触手只是想确保你能有饭吃、有衣穿、能买到所需的药品，并且不会流落街头。它并不在乎这些事情是如何发生的——它只希望它们能发生。但章鱼上的其他触手总是把事情搞得一团糟，让“实际需求”触手的生活变得异常艰难。每次你的收入增加，“生活方式”触手就会提高它的期望值，导致“实际需求”触手不得不拼命应付，以免你不得不刷爆信用卡。你的“个人需求”触手有一堆奇怪的需求，占用了大量时间，而且往往并不能带来丰厚的收入。虽然“实际需求”触手完全愿意向你的有钱叔叔借钱来渡过难关，但“社交需求”触手却禁止向别人借钱，因为“这样不好看”，而“个人需求”触手也附和说“是的，我们比这更有尊严”。

这就是现状

你的脑子里有一只“渴望章鱼”，它有五只触手（或者你的章鱼有多少只触手），每只触手都有自己的议程，而这些议程常常相互冲突。然后，每只触手上还有各自独立的渴望，这些渴望之间也常常发生冲突。如果这还不够，有时一个单一的渴望内部也会发生激烈的冲突。比如，当你追求激情的渴望无法确定自己最热衷的是什么时。

或者当你非常渴望获得尊重，但随即意识到，赢得社会某一部分人永恒尊重的事业，必定会让另一部分人耸耸肩，甚至受到冷嘲热讽时。

或者当你决定满足自己帮助他人的渴望时，才发现，想要将一生献给减少人类最大存在风险的那部分你，内心对想在当地社区做出具体积极改变的部分你感到明显的蔑视——而你对眼下无法享有干净水源的数百万人的关切，觉得那两种其他的渴望既冷酷又无情。

所以，是的，你的渴望章鱼确实很复杂。历史上没有人能完全满足他们的整个章鱼——这就是为什么你永远也找不到它完全微笑的原因。人类的渴望是一场选择、牺牲和妥协的游戏。

解构章鱼

既然如此，让我们回到你的“愿望盒子”。当我们考虑职业目标、恐惧、希望和梦想时，我们的意识实际上只是在访问渴望章鱼的净输出——通常是它最响亮的声音。只有通过深入挖掘我们心灵的潜意识，才能看到事情的真相 [6]。

[6] 如果你想在纸上进行分析，帖子底部有打印稿。

有趣的是，我们每个人都有能力做到这一点。你潜意识中的东西就像房子里的地下室。它不是我们无法接触的地方——它只是存在于地下室。我们随时都可以去看它——我们只需要
A）记住房子里有地下室，
B）花时间和精力去地下室，尽管下楼可能会让你觉得不太舒服。

那么，让我们去你心灵的地下室，看看章鱼。除非你是那种擅长分析自己潜意识的人，否则地下室可能很黑暗，导致你很难看到章鱼。开始打开灯的方式是识别出你当前意识中关于渴望和恐惧的内容，然后进行拆解。

比如，如果有某个职业道路听起来对你来说非常棒，那就拆解一下。哪些触角特别渴望那份职业——而这些触角的具体部分又是什么？

如果你现在并没有朝着那个职业努力，试着弄清楚为什么。如果你认为是因为害怕失败，那就拆解这个恐惧。失败的恐惧可能源自任何触角，因此这并不是一个具体的分析。你需要找到恐惧的具体源头。是社交触角害怕尴尬，还是害怕别人认为自己不聪明，或者在追求恋爱关系时显得不够成功？是个人触角害怕损害自己的自我形象——确认一个困扰你的自我怀疑？是生活方式触角害怕降级自己的生活状态，或是将压力和不稳定带入目前的可预测生活？或者这种降级生活状态的恐惧，实际上并非来自生活方式触角，而更来自社交触角——换句话说，你是否对公寓的变化本身无动于衷，但却非常担心这种生活方式的降级会给朋友和家人传递什么信息？或者是你有一些财务承诺，当前无法撤回，而你的实际触角真心担心，如果这次职业转变比预期的要花费更长时间，甚至可能完全失败，你怎么维持生计？还是这些因素的某些结合，产生了你害怕迈出这一步的情绪？

也许你并不认为自己害怕失败，而是其他的东西。或许是对职业变动不可避免带来的身份变化——无论是内部还是外部——的恐惧。也许是巨大的惯性——对改变的强烈抵抗——似乎自带动力，压倒了所有其他渴望。在这两种情况下，你需要拆解这个感觉，问问自己究竟是哪些触角如此反对身份转变，或者是被惯性驱使。

或许你渴望变得富有。你幻想着赚 120 万美元的生活，并且感觉到强烈的动力去实现这一目标。所有五个触角在某些情况下都可能渴望财富，各自有其原因。那就拆解它。

当你拆解对赚钱的内心驱动力时，或许你会发现，它的核心驱动力更多的是对安全感的渴望，而不是巨额财富。这也可以继续拆解。对安全感的渴望，最简单的说法就是你的实际触角在做它的本职工作。但是，或许你真正想要的，并不是简单的安全感，而是生活方式或社交触角要求的一定水平的奢华。又或者你真正渴望的是一种超乎寻常的安全感，已经无法称之为安全感的渴望——而是生活方式触角的情感需求，试图缓解你从小就习惯于感受的财务焦虑，几乎不管你实际的经济状况如何。

这些问题的答案都在你渴望章鱼的触角上。通过像这样提问，深入挖掘各种渴望的根源，你会开始开启地下室的灯，并与章鱼在它的复杂性中亲密接触。

你也会开始理解，哪一些内心的渴望在你脑海中声音最大，决策时影响力最大。很快，一种渴望的层级结构就会显现出来。你会识别出那些声音很大并且总是得到满足的渴望；那些喊得很响，但不断被章鱼中优先级更高的部分推开的渴望；以及那些似乎对它们在层级中低位的地位心甘情愿的渴望。

寻找伪装者

我们已经取得了不错的进展——但这只是开始。一旦你对你的渴望章鱼有了一个相对清晰的了解，你就可以开始进行真正的工作——进入潜意识的下一层，在地下室的地下室。这是你可以设置一个小审讯室，一个个将每个渴望带到这里进行审问。

你会从问每个渴望：你是怎么来到这里的，为什么你会是现在这样？渴望、信念、价值观和恐惧不是凭空产生的。它们是随着时间的推移，由我们的内部意识在观察和生活经验的作用下形成的，或者它们是从外部植入我们的，被别人所影响。换句话说，它们是你自己当主厨，还是你作为“厨子”的产品。

所以在你的审讯室里，目标就是拉扯每个渴望的面孔，看看它是否真的属于你，还是某个伪装成你的东西。

你可以通过玩“为什么”游戏来拉扯渴望的面孔。你会问自己第一个“为什么”——为什么我会想要这个？——然后得到某种“因为”。然后你会继续追问。为什么这个“因为”会引导你去渴望现在的东西？这个“因为”何时积累了如此大的分量？你会追问到一个更深层次的“因为”。如果你继续下去，通常会发现以下三种情况之一：

1. 你会追溯到为什么的源头，发现它是经过深思熟虑的独立进化，确认它是通过独立思考和长期积淀发展出来的。你拉扯它的面孔，确认皮肤是真的。

2. 你会追溯到某个最初的“因为”，发现原来是别人强加给你的——也许我真正拥有这个价值观的唯一原因，是因为我妈妈曾经强迫我接受它——然后你意识到，你从未真正思考过自己是否独立认同它。你从未停下来问自己，你的智慧是否真能支持你对这个核心信念的坚定。遇到这种情况时，那个渴望就会暴露出来，成为一个冒充你真正渴望的伪装者。你拉扯它的面孔，它就会掉下来，露出其背后的“植入者”。

3. 你会追溯下去，却陷入“我猜我只是知道这是真的”这样的一片迷雾之中。这可能是一个真实的你，或者只是第 2 种情况的变体——在这种情况下，你无法回忆起这个感觉是何时被植入你的心里的。你内心深处会对哪一种情况有某种直觉。

在第 1 种情况下，你可以为自己感到骄傲，因为你就像一个厨师一样发展了这一部分。这是一个真实且经过艰苦努力的感觉或价值观。

在第 2 种或可能是第 3 种情况下，你发现自己被骗了。你让别人偷偷潜入了你的渴望章鱼，而你却没注意到。对于这个特别的信念，你只是一个跟着别人食谱做饭的厨子——一个顺从的机器人，重复别人大脑里的渴望和恐惧。

有可能你是一个异常明智的人，经过审视发现你的章鱼主要是由你自己塑造的，并且随时保持更新。更有可能的是，你像我以及我的大多数朋友一样——你的审讯室揭示了一些明显的冒名顶替者，或者至少有很多模棱两可的地方。比如，在一张面具下，你会发现你的妈妈。

你会揭开其他面具，发现更广泛的传统智慧的价值观和判断，或者你所在社区的普遍观点，或者你这一代主流文化认为酷的东西，或者你最亲密朋友群体中的即时文化。

有时你会走到“为什么 - 因为”路径的尽头，却发现背后是一本著名小说中的哲学，或者是你某个偶像名人在采访中说过的话，甚至是你某个教授总是重复的强烈观点。

你可能还会发现，自己的一些渴望和恐惧其实是你在七岁时写下的。就像一个童年的梦想，深深刻在你意识的角落，成为了你真正认为自己想要的东西，当你真正诚实地面对自己时。

审讯室可能不会很有趣，但这是值得花时间的

因为你不是 7 岁的自己，就像你不是你的父母、朋友、你这一代人、社会、英雄、过去的决定或最近的环境一样。你是“当前年龄的你”——唯一有资格想要或不想要某些东西的人，也是唯一有资格决定自己真正想要什么的版本。

需要明确的是，这并不是说按照明智的父母、著名哲学家、你尊重的朋友或年轻时的信念生活是错误的。谦逊的人本质上是可以被影响的——影响是我们每个人身份的重要组成部分，也是不可避免的。关键的区别在于：

你是将外部影响的话语视为信息，由真实的内心自我持有和考虑，并经过仔细思考后决定接受吗？还是这些影响本身实际上已经进入你的大脑，伪装成内心的你？

你想要的东西和别人一样，是因为你听到他们谈论它，结合自己的生活经验思考后，最终决定暂时同意吗？还是因为你听到某人谈论他们想要或害怕的东西，然后想：“我一无所知，而那个人懂，所以如果他们说 X 是对的，我肯定他们是对的”——然后你把这些想法刻在脑子里，再也不觉得需要质疑它们？

前者是主厨的做法。后者是当你成为一个顺从的机器人时的做法。而当你脑子里认为别人比你更有资格成为你自己时，你就变成了一个机器人。

好消息是，所有人都会犯这个错误——而你可以修复它。就像你的潜意识就在那里，如果你想查看它，它就在那里——它也可以被改变、更新和重写。这是你的脑袋——你可以对它做任何你想做的事情。

所以现在是时候进行一些清理了。那些戴着面具的冒名顶替者必须离开。即使是妈妈和爸爸也不例外。

在这之后，你的章鱼可能会看起来有点空荡荡的，让你感觉好像不知道自己是谁了。我们通常认为这是一种糟糕的感觉，甚至是一种存在危机，但实际上这意味着你比大多数人做得更好。

从天真的过度自信到明智、现实的谦逊的跌落永远不会让人感觉好，但暂停过山车，停在第一座悬崖上，避免痛苦——事实证明，这正是许多人选择的策略——其实并不是一个好策略。

智慧与知识无关，它与接触现实有关——它不在于你在图表上走多远，而在于你离那个橙色线条有多近。智慧一开始很痛苦，但它是唯一能带来真正成长的地方。讽刺的是，世界上的那些停留在悬崖边的人喜欢让那些更聪明、更勇敢的谷底居民或不断攀登的人感到自卑——因为他们根本不明白了解自己是怎么回事。他们还没有达到那个阶段。

了解真实的自己非常困难，而且永远不会是完全的。但如果你已经从悬崖上跌落，你已经经历了一个关键的成长仪式，进步现在是可能的。随着你向着橙色线条攀登，你将慢慢但肯定地重新填充你的渴望章鱼，找回真正的自我。

目前，你可能还不清楚那些缺失的欲望究竟是什么——因为它们在你潜意识的更深层次。它们在地下室的地下室里，甚至更深的地方——一个叫做“否认监狱”的地方。

否认监狱

我们大脑中的否认监狱是一个大多数人甚至不知道存在的地方——它是我们将自己压抑和否认的部分藏匿的地方。

我们与之接触的真实欲望——也就是说，在审讯过程中证明是真实的部分——是我们真实自我的一部分，这些部分很容易在我们的潜意识中找到，它们暴露在我们意识的表面之下。甚至我们的意识也对这些欲望非常熟悉，因为它们经常会出现在我们的思想中。这些是我们与之保持健康关系的部分。

但也有一些部分，它们并没有在章鱼上待着，而是被一些冒名顶替者占据了。当你试图找回这些丢失的部分时，它们通常是极其难以接触的，因为它们一直生活在你潜意识的最深层，几乎无处可寻。

有些部分会被流放到地下室第三层，是因为它们让我们极为痛苦，难以承认或思考。有时我们的一些新部分刚刚诞生，却被立刻锁进监狱，作为我们自我进化的否认——即出于固执。但也有时候，我们的某些部分被锁进否认监狱，是因为别人把它们关在了那里。就你那些欲望而言，其中一些可能是被曾经冒充过你内心真实自我的人锁进的。如果父亲成功地让你相信你非常重视拥有一个有声望的职业，他很可能也让你相信，那个内心深处真正渴望成为木匠的你并不是真正的你，也不是你真正想要的。你童年的某个时刻，他把你对木工的热情投进了一个黑暗、阴湿的否认监狱。

所以让我们鼓起勇气，深入到你心灵的地下室，去看看我们能发现什么。

你可能会遇到一些不愉快的人物。

把它们留到另一个时刻——现在，去寻找那些被锁起来的与职业相关的渴望。或许你会发现一个被压抑的教学激情，或是一个渴望出名的欲望，这个欲望是你所属的群体让你羞愧地放弃的，亦或是你对长时间自由、闲暇时光的深深热爱，而这个热爱被你那个更加贪婪、渴望雄心的青少年时期的自我踢到了地下室。

有些部分的真实自我你可能无法在否认监狱中找回——那里相当黑暗。但要有耐心——既然你已经完成了审计并为它们清理了空间，它们可能会开始浮现出来。

优先级排序

在我们的“渴望章鱼”审查中，另一个部分将涉及你渴望的层次结构。几乎和渴望本身一样重要的是它们的优先级。这种层次结构很容易看到，因为它通过你的行动显现出来。你可能认为追求大胆的渴望在你的层次结构中排名很高，但如果你目前没有在做任何大胆的事情，这表明无论大胆对你有多重要，其他一些东西——你内心的某种恐惧或惰性——目前被优先考虑。

重要的是要记住，渴望的排序也是反映了恐惧的排序。章鱼包含任何可能让你想要或不想要追求某种职业的东西，而每个渴望的反面是伴随的对立面的恐惧。你对被钦佩的渴望的反面是对尴尬的恐惧。如果你翻转自我实现的渴望，你会看到对未达成的恐惧。你对自尊的渴望的另一半是对羞耻感的恐惧。如果你的行动似乎与你认为的内心渴望层次结构不符，通常是因为你忘记了考虑恐惧的作用。例如，看似坚定的成功动力，实际上可能是某人在逃避负面的自我形象，或试图摆脱嫉妒或不被欣赏的感觉。如果你的行动似乎受制于你并不真正关心的渴望，你可能没有足够仔细地审视你的恐惧。

在考虑渴望和恐惧的同时，思考一下你的内心层次结构可能是什么样子，并回到同样重要的问题：“谁制定了这个顺序？真的是我吗？”

例如，我们经常被告知要“追随我们的激情”——这是社会在说“把你的激情渴望放在你的层次结构的顶端。”这是一个非常具体的指示。也许这对你来说是正确的，但也可能不是。这是你需要独立评估的东西。

为了正确做到这一点，让我们尝试从第一性原理出发，根据我们真正是谁，我们如何随着时间的推移而演变，以及现在对我们来说真正最重要的是什么，进行一个全新的排序。

这不是关于哪些渴望或恐惧声音最大，或者哪些恐惧最明显——如果是这样，你就会让你的冲动掌控你的生活。进行排序的人是你——正在阅读这篇文章的小小意识中心，它可以观察你的章鱼并客观地看待它。这涉及另一种妥协。一方面，你将尝试利用你一生中积累的所有智慧，并积极做出关于价值观的决定——关于你真正认为重要的东西。另一方面，这是关于自我接纳和自我同情。有时你会有强烈的、不可否认的渴望，你可能并不为此感到骄傲——无论你喜欢与否，这些都是你的一部分，当你忽视它们时，它们可能会持续发出臭味并让你痛苦。创建你的渴望层次结构是在重要性和你之间的一种取舍。将更高的优先级赋予你更高尚的品质可能是一个好目标，但也可以给你不那么高尚的一面一些空间——这取决于你决定在哪里划清界限。知道何时接受你不那么高尚的一面，何时完全拒绝它，这是一种智慧。

为了将所有这些整理好，我们需要一个好的系统。你可以尝试适合你的方法——我喜欢书架子的概念：

这将事物分为五个类别。绝对最高优先级的内在驱动力应该被放入“特别不可谈判碗”NON-NEGOTIABLE 中。NN 碗是那些对你非常重要的渴望，它们对你来说重要到几乎不惜一切代价都要确保它们实现——即使需要牺牲其他所有的渴望。这就是为什么许多历史上的传奇人物往往是单一目标的——他们有一个非常强烈的 NN 碗渴望，它使他们成名，通常是以牺牲人际关系、平衡和健康为代价。这个碗很小，因为它应该非常节制地使用——如果有的话，可能只允许一个愿望在里面。或者可能是两个或三个。NN 碗里的东西太多，会抵消它的力量，这样就等同于碗里什么都没有。

你的一组顶级渴望TOP 主要会驱动你的职业选择——但顶级渴望的定位也应该节制（这就是为什么它的架子容量不大）。
你不仅是在选择哪些部分对你来说最重要，能够让你快乐，同时还在选择哪些部分故意不予优先，甚至与之对立。无论你的层级结构如何，总会有一些渴望感到非常不满，也会有一些恐惧感到它们正在不断地受到攻击。这是不可避免的。

这就是为什么大多数渴望应该被放在中层架子、底层架子或垃圾桶里的原因。

中层架子适合那些不那么高尚的品质，是你决定接受的部分。它们需要你的一些关注。而且它们通常会要求得到这种关注——你内心的核心部分不会安静地接受不被优先对待的命运，如果忽视它们，它们有时会真的毁了你的人生。

其余的大多数将最终落到底层架子上。把某个部分放在底层架子上，就是在对它说：“我知道你想要这些东西，但现在，我决定其他的东西更重要。我保证稍后会再考虑你，在我获得更多信息后，如果我改变主意，你将会获得一次升职。”最好的理解底层架子的方法是：你能说服多少个渴望接受底层架子的定位，你的顶级渴望和 NN 碗的渴望就有更大的可能实现它们的目标。反之，放在顶级架子上的渴望越少，它们更有可能繁荣。你的时间和精力是极为有限的，因此这是一个零和妥协。业余的错误是过于自由地使用 NN 碗和顶级架子，而对于大底层架子却过于节制。

然后是垃圾桶，用来放那些你完全拒绝的驱动力和恐惧——那些本质上违反了你最明智的自我想要成为的人的部分。很多内心的冲突来自于人们的垃圾桶，而垃圾桶的控制是正直和内在力量的主要组成部分。但就像其他的层级决策一样，你认为什么算作垃圾的标准应该来自你自己深思熟虑后的决定，而不是别人告诉你什么是垃圾，什么不是垃圾。

在经历这一艰难的优先排序过程时——不可避免地，有时会遇到那些被降级的渴望的强烈抗议——记住，你是房间里唯一明智的那一个。渴望和恐惧是急躁的，且缺乏全局视野。即使是看似崇高的渴望，比如道德触角上的那些，也无法像你一样理解完整的图景。许多在改善世界方面取得卓越成就的人，他们的道路一开始可能就是源自财富或个人成就这样的自私动机——这些动机可能一开始就被他们的道德触角所排斥。章鱼不会是房间里的智慧成人——那是你的工作。

最后，正如我们稍后会讨论的那样，这并不是一个永久的决定。恰恰相反——它是一个用浅色铅笔写的草稿。这是一个假设，你可以通过实际生活中体验这种层次结构的感觉来测试并修订它。

你的“想要盒子”已经准备好了。现在让我们转向你的“现实盒子”。

[anonymous_coward]

Deep Analysis, Part 2: Your Reality Box

“Wish Box” concerns the things you desire; “Reality Box” concerns the things that could be realized.

However, when we examine the “Wish Box,” we find that it is not based on what you truly desire, but on what you think you want—the things you habitually crave.

The “Reality Box” is the same. It does not display reality itself, but your best guess about the possibilities of reality—your perception of reality.

The goal of self‑reflection is to make these two boxes as close to the truth as possible. We want our perceived desires to genuinely reflect our inner true self, and we want our beliefs about possibilities to closely reflect actual possibilities. In reviewing the “Wish Box,” we look inside it and discover its settings—your desires and fears. When we lift the lid of the “Reality Box,” we see a set of beliefs.

Regarding career possibilities, you face two sets of beliefs: beliefs about the world and beliefs about your own potential. For a career option to enter your “Reality Box,” your potential in that field must match the objective difficulty of succeeding in that field.

As humans, we may not be good at accurately assessing either side.

I don’t know how you view the difficulty of career paths, but in my experience people usually think like this:

Traditional careers—such as medicine, law, teaching, or corporate ladders—have predictable, established routes. If you’re smart enough and work hard, you’ll eventually achieve success and a stable position.
Non‑traditional careers—such as art, entrepreneurship, nonprofit work, politics, etc.—are full of uncertainty. Success and stability are not guaranteed; reaching the top often depends on luck, talent, or a combination of both.

These assumptions might have been reasonable in 1952.

Your beliefs about the career world and the elements needed for success need to be uncovered just as thoroughly as your desires—I suspect that behind most beliefs you’ll find deep‑seated traditional notions. You may first peel back a belief’s mask and see your parents, friends, or a college career counselor—but if you keep digging, you’ll usually find that this too is a mask, hiding traditional ideas. A common concept, a popular viewpoint, a frequently cited statistic [7]—none of which you have personally verified, yet society treats them as truth.

[7]: Did you know that 9 out of 10 restaurants go out of business?!

The world changes dramatically every decade, making traditional ideas often seriously outdated. Yet our brains are adapted to an almost unchanging ancient world, so we reason like chefs, equating tradition with truth.

These issues then affect how we view our own potential. When you overestimate the impact of talent on career achievement and conflate talent with skill level, you become insecure about many career paths. Because we know the development trajectories of traditional careers better, we’re less likely to err there. A medical student seeing an experienced surgeon might think, “One day I’ll be like that—just 20 years of effort.” But a young artist, entrepreneur, or software engineer looking at top figures in their fields is more likely to think, “Wow, they’re so talented—I’m nowhere near them,” and feel despair. Another common notion is that those who succeed in non‑traditional careers had a “breakthrough,” like winning a lottery—but I don’t think many people are willing to gamble their careers on a lottery ticket.

These are just a few examples of the many misconceptions and misunderstandings we have about how great careers are formed. So, let’s explore what the reality might actually look like:

Career Landscape

I know very little about it, and I suspect most people do too. Things change too fast.

But that’s the point. If you can figure out how to obtain an accurate understanding of the real career landscape, you’ll have a huge advantage over most people, who largely rely on traditional ideas as a guidebook.

First, there is a broad career landscape—the set of all possible careers in today’s society.
My current “position” is: “Write 8,000‑to‑40,000‑word articles on various topics, with profanity and doodles, at an extremely irregular frequency.”
Do you think traditional ideas have a role that fits me? Today’s career landscape consists of tens of thousands of options—some that have existed for 40 years, others that only became possible three months ago thanks to new technology. In today’s world, if the career you want doesn’t yet exist, you can probably create it yourself. That’s stressful, but also exciting.

Second, each specific career path. A career path is like a game board. Traditional‑idea books contain only a tiny fraction of the manuals for today’s available boards—and those manuals usually tell you how the game was played in the past, even though the board has now evolved with new opportunities, different rules, and loopholes. When you consider today’s career paths, to accurately assess what a path looks like and what strengths/weaknesses it favors, you must understand what the current board looks like. Otherwise it’s like trying to gauge your chance of becoming a professional basketball player based solely on height and strength, without realizing that basketball has evolved into a game played on a massive court with ten 7‑foot‑high hoops, where speed matters more than height or strength.

That’s hopeful news. There may be many excellent career paths that match your natural strengths perfectly, and most people striving for success on those paths are using outdated rulebooks and strategy guides. If you understand the actual board and play by modern rules, you’ll have a huge edge.

Your Potential

That brings us back to you and your unique strengths. We not only evaluate our strengths on the wrong board (as in the basketball example)—even when we have the right board in mind, we often fail to recognize the true strengths the game requires.

When evaluating your chances on a particular career path, the key question is:

Over time, can you become good enough in this “game” to meet your own definition of success?

I like to view the “be good enough to succeed” journey as a distance. The distance starts at your current point—point A—and ends at the star that represents your definition of success.

The length of the distance depends on where point A is (your current position) and where the star is (how high your definition of success is).

So, if you’re a computer‑science graduate whose career goal is to become a mid‑level engineer at Google, your distance might look like this:

But if you’ve never studied computer science and your goal is to become a chief engineer at Google, the road ahead will be much longer:

If your goal is to create the next Google, the path will be even longer.

At this point, conventional wisdom may pop into your mind and point out that excelling in a single skill does not guarantee success—you might reach the star on the career path but still feel “unsuccessful.”

That view is largely wrong because it misunderstands what the star represents. The star does not stand for a specific skill level—like programming ability, acting talent, or business acumen—it stands for the whole “game.” In traditional careers, the game is often straightforward—if you want to be a top surgeon and you become extremely skilled at surgery, you’ve likely reached your star and will have a career. In non‑traditional careers, the board usually involves many more factors. Reaching the star “I want to be a famous actor” does not just mean being as good as Morgan Freeman at acting; it means mastering the entire actor game the way most movie stars do when they break out. Acting ability is only one piece—you also need the skill to get in front of powerful people, a savvy sense of personal branding, extreme optimism, astonishing diligence, persistence, etc. If you are excellent in every component of the game, your chance of becoming a leading movie star is actually quite high. That is what “reaching the star” means.

Traditional wisdom doesn’t grasp how non‑traditional careers work—it only thinks about success from a narrow angle: talent and effort. When the career‑game board involves many more variables, traditional wisdom throws up its hands and calls it “luck.” From that perspective, becoming a movie star requires some talent but mainly hinges on hitting a rare lottery jackpot.

So, how do you calculate the odds of reaching any particular star? It comes down to a simple formula:

Distance = Speed × Time.

In our example, a more fitting phrasing might be:

Progress = Rhythm × Persistence.

Your prospects in any career pursuit depend on:
A) the rhythm at which you improve in that career “game”;
B) the amount of time you’re willing to persist in chasing that star. Let’s discuss each separately:

Rhythm

What makes one person’s improvement speed faster or slower in the career game? I think it boils down to three factors:

1. Your “head‑chef” level.
   As we discussed earlier, a “head‑chef” looks at the world with fresh eyes and draws conclusions from their own observations and experience. A “cook” follows someone else’s recipe— in careers, the recipe is usually traditional wisdom. Careers are complex games, and almost everyone starts out unskilled—then the “head‑chef” rapidly improves through continual iteration…
   

   
   
   …while the “cook” progresses at a snail’s pace because their strategy is merely to follow an almost‑unchanging recipe. More importantly, in a world where the career game constantly evolves, the “head‑chef’s” strategy can evolve in real time and keep pace. Meanwhile, the “cook’s” recipe becomes increasingly outdated—and they remain blissfully unaware. That’s why I’m convinced that, at least in non‑traditional careers, your “head‑chef level” is the most important factor determining your improvement speed.

2. Your work ethic.
   This one is obvious. Someone who works 60 hours a week for 50 weeks a year will progress roughly four times faster than someone who works 20 hours a week for 40 weeks a year. People who choose a balanced lifestyle will progress slower than work‑aholics. Those with lazy or procrastinating tendencies will fall far behind those who can consistently put in effort. People who get distracted, day‑dream, or constantly check their phone will accomplish less per work hour than those who can deep‑focus.

3. Your natural abilities.
   Talent does matter. Smarter, more gifted people will improve their game level faster than less gifted people. But intelligence and talent are only two categories of natural ability that matter here. Cleverness and savvy are also important, and those qualities are not always tied to pure intellect. Depending on the career, social skills may be crucial. In many fields, a likable (or subtly manipulative) person has a big advantage over someone less likable—and sociable people will invest more social time and build deeper relationships than introverted types.

   Of course, other factors such as existing networks, resources, and skills are important too, but they are not components of rhythm—they belong to point A’s location.

Persistence

When I say “persistence,” I mean long‑term persistence (not daily work attitude). Persistence is simpler than rhythm. How many years you’re willing to spend chasing that star determines how far you can go. A car that drives at 30 mph but stops after 5 minutes travels less distance than a car that drives at 5 mph continuously for 10 hours.

That’s basically a math problem. You turn each board into a line, mark the start and the success star, generate the various distances in front of you, then for each path multiply your rhythm by your persistence. If the product of rhythm and persistence seems able to cover the total length of a career path, that path belongs in your “Reality Box.” You won’t be able to calculate exact values for every factor, but knowing the formula you’re using is already helpful.

A first‑principles “Reality Box” audit may bring some overly optimistic people back to reality, but I suspect that for most people it will make them realize they have far more options than they imagined, motivating them to set a bolder direction.

A good “Reality Box” reflection also warrants another “Wish Box” reflection. Re‑examining a set of career paths will affect how much you actually desire some of them. A path that once seemed daunting after thousands of hours of networking or years of struggle may become less attractive. Another path may look less intimidating after you change your view of luck. Some career options you never considered because you didn’t see them as real choices may open up after deep reflection.

After a fairly time‑consuming box‑audit process, we can return to our Venn diagram [10].

[10]: John Venn actually did something remarkable here. The Venn diagram is the most obvious type of chart, yet for some reason John Venn managed to convince everyone that he invented it—even though he publicly admitted he didn’t. Venn explained, “I immediately began to study more systematically the topics and books I needed to teach. It was then that I first thought of using overlapping circles to represent propositions. Of course the method wasn’t brand‑new at the time, but it was clearly the way anyone approaching the subject from a mathematical angle would try to visualise propositions, so it just popped into my mind naturally.”

Assume some things have changed and you now have a new “option pool”—a new list of options that both rank high on your priority list and look achievable. We’re now ready to return to the pre‑analysis state: the present moment. Facing these options, we can lift our heads, step out of the analysis, and look toward the future.

[anonymous_coward]

Connecting the Dots to the Future

Now it’s time to pull out the career‑planning diagram I asked you to set aside at the start of the article — the one marked with an arrow or a question mark. If you had already drawn an arrow before you began examining it, then look at your new Option Pool. After some careful thought, does your current career plan still meet the criteria? If so, congratulations — you’re already ahead of most of us.

If not, that’s certainly bad news, but it’s also good news. Remember, turning a false arrow into a question mark is always a big step forward in life.

In fact, a new question mark means you’ve completed a crucial cliff‑jump on two roller‑coaster tracks: knowing yourself and understanding the world. It’s an important step in the right direction. Cross out the arrow and join the question‑mark camp.

Now the question‑mark camp faces a tough choice. You have to pick an arrow from the option pool.

It’s a hard choice — but it should be a lot easier than it feels. Here’s why:

Past careers are a bit like a 40‑year tunnel. You chose the tunnel, and once you’re in, you can’t turn back. You work in that career for about 40 years until the tunnel spits you out into retirement.

In fact, a career may never truly be a 40‑year tunnel; it only looks that way. At best, the traditional career of the past was just a tunnel‑like trajectory.

Today’s careers — especially the non‑traditional ones — are nothing like tunnels. Yet outdated conventional wisdom still leads many to view things that way, making an already difficult career‑path decision even trickier.

When you view a career as a tunnel, it triggers an identity crisis for anyone who isn’t sure who they are or what they want to become in the coming decades — a situation most rational people encounter. It reinforces the illusion that our work is our identity, making the question marks on the map look like an existential disaster.

When you see a career as a tunnel, the stakes of making the “right” choice feel so high that they amplify the pressure of choice‑aversion. For perfectionists, this feeling can be completely paralyzing.

When you see a career as a tunnel, even if your soul is calling, you lose the courage to switch careers. It makes career changes seem hugely risky and embarrassing, and suggests that those who do it are failures. It also makes many versatile, energetic middle‑agers feel they’re too old to boldly pivot or start a brand‑new path.

But the old narrative still tells many people that a career is a tunnel. Worse still — besides making us crave things we don’t truly want, denying deep‑seated desires, fearing things that aren’t dangerous, and believing inaccurate things about the world and our potential — the old narrative tells us the career is a tunnel, helping us scare ourselves unnecessarily.

Today’s career landscape isn’t a series of tunnels; it’s a massive, extremely complex, rapidly changing scientific laboratory. People today can’t be reduced to their jobs — they are highly complex, fast‑evolving scientists. And today’s careers aren’t tunnels, boxes, or identity tags — they are a long series of scientific experiments.

Steve Jobs likened life to connecting the dots, pointing out that while it’s easy to look back and see how the dots linked to bring you to the present, it’s almost impossible to connect those dots ahead of time.

If you look at the biographies of the heroes you admire, you’ll see their paths look more like a series of connected dots than a straight, predictable tunnel. If you observe yourself and your friends, you’ll notice a similar trend — according to data, young people stay at a single job for an average of only 3 years (older workers stay a bit longer at each point, but not much — about 10.4 years on average).

Thus, viewing a career as a series of dots isn’t a psychological trick to help you decide — it’s an accurate description of reality. Viewing a career as a tunnel is not only unhelpful — it’s fantasy.

Likewise, you should focus on the next dot on your current path — because that’s the only dot you can actually figure out. You don’t need to worry about the fourth dot, because you can’t possibly do that — you’re not even qualified to consider that far ahead right now.

When the fourth dot arrives, you’ll learn things about yourself that you don’t know now. You’ll also be a different version of yourself; your “yearning octopus” will reflect those changes. You’ll have a better sense of what you’re good at, what career fields interest you, and the specific “rules of the game,” and you’ll become a better player. Of course, those fields and rules will also evolve.

The excellent site 80,000 Hours (which aims to help talented young people solve career‑choice problems) has gathered a lot of data supporting this: you’ll change, the world will change, you’ll only learn over time what you’re actually good at. Prominent psychologist Dan Gilbert also eloquently describes how terrible we are at predicting what will make us happy in the future.

Pretending you can now pinpoint what the 2nd, 4th, or 8th dot will look like is absurd. Future dots are problems the wiser‑future‑you will have to face, and that belongs to the future world. So let’s focus on the 1st dot.

If we treat ourselves as scientists and society as a scientific laboratory, we should view the current revised “Wish‑Reality Venn diagram” as just a rough preliminary hypothesis. The 1st dot is your chance to test it.

Hypothesis testing is intuitive in the dating world. If a friend keeps pondering what kind of person she wants to marry but never goes on dates, you’d say, “You can’t figure this out sitting on the couch — you have to start dating to learn what you want in a partner.” If that friend goes on a decent first date and then spends hours at home wondering whether the person is “the one,” you’d correct her: “One date can’t tell you that! You need multiple dates to accumulate the experience needed to make a decision.”

We’d all agree that this hypothetical friend is a bit crazy, lacking the basic understanding needed to find a happy relationship. So, when choosing a career, don’t be like her. The 1st dot is a low‑stakes situation — it’s just a first date.

That’s good news — because it dramatically reduces the pressure of drawing arrows on the map; it’s just an arrow pointing to the future 1st dot. The real cause of choice‑aversion is that you clearly see the many options the world now offers, yet you mistakenly treat those careers as a 40‑year tunnel of the past. That’s a lethal combination. Reframing your next major career decision as a low‑risk choice makes the many options exciting rather than stressful.

In theory all of this sounds great. But now we get to the hardest part.

Taking Action

You’ve reflected, weighed, forecasted, and considered repeatedly. You’ve picked a dot and drawn an arrow. Now you have to actually act.

We’re especially bad at this. We’re timid people. We dislike hassle, and taking bold real‑life steps is a hassle. If we have any procrastination tendency, it shows up here.

The “yearning octopus” can help us. As we discussed earlier, any behavior you exhibit simply shows the configuration of the octopus. If you decide on a life step but can’t execute it, it’s because the part of you that wants to act isn’t ranked high enough in the subconscious compared to the part that wants to stay idle. Your conscious mind may try to give the lazy part a low score, but your yearning fights back. You’re like a CEO who can’t control employees.

To solve this, think like a kindergarten teacher. In your class there’s a group of 5‑year‑olds rebelling against your wishes. What do you do?

Go talk to those troublesome 5‑year‑olds. They’re annoying, rebellious little creatures, but they can be reasoned with. Explain why you’ve placed them lower in the octopus hierarchy. Share the insights you gained from the “real‑frame reflection.” Remind them how dot‑connecting works and how easy the 1st dot is. You’re the teacher — figure out how to handle them.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the internal struggle of being the kindergarten teacher occupies about 97 % of life. The world is simple — you are complex. If you keep failing to follow through on life plans and commitments, you’ve identified a new top priority — become a better kindergarten teacher. Until you do, your life will be run by a bunch of primitive, anxious 5‑year‑olds, and you’ll feel the octopus’s constant complaining. The burden of constantly reinventing your life map never feels easy — but insecurity and difficulty are the feeling of steering your own ship. When we feel too good, we risk overconfidence, intellectual smugness, and rigidity. It’s precisely when we think we’ve fully mastered life that we lose our way.

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Throughout your life, your good and bad decisions will together shape your unique road. In this blog I often write about how irrational our fears are and how severely they block us. Perhaps we should also embrace the fear of regret at life’s end.

I’ve been lucky never to face a dying‑bed scenario, but it seems the end of life lets people look at things with clear eyes. Facing death appears to melt away the “false” voices that aren’t yours, leaving a small, honest self to reflect. I think the regrets at life’s end may simply be the thoughts of your authentic self — about the parts of a life you never realized, the parts other people pushed into your subconscious.

My own psychology seems to support this — looking back over my path, the biggest mistakes that bother me are the ones where other people hijacked my mind, silencing my insecure, quiet true self — mistakes I knew deep down were wrong at the time. My goal for the future isn’t to avoid mistakes, but to make sure the mistakes I make belong to me.

That’s why this post involved such painful, rigorous analysis. I consider it one of the few life topics worth spending time on. The other strong voices trying to live for you will never stop — you owe an explanation to that small, uneasy character at the center of your consciousness.

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Help Analyze Your Situation

Some worksheets to record: your octopus, your priority shelf, some path distances, your career‑dot map.

Your octopus.
Your priority shelf.
Some path distances.
Your career dot map.

For those who want to dig deeper: Alicia (WBW manager, responsible for many things) prepared a more detailed set of exercise sheets.

a more involved group of worksheets.

Further Exploration

The 80,000 Hours website — dedicated to helping talented young people make major career choices — is an excellent resource. The site is run by very smart, thoughtful, forward‑looking people and can be digested via videos, books or the website itself.

For years I’ve read Seth Godin’s blog Seth Godin’s blog. Seth shares short snippets each morning (I receive them by email). Many of his suggestions apply to career choices. For example this post (I adapted it into a comic for this article).

Eric Barker’s blog Eric Barker’s blog is full of practical data that help with career decisions, such as this article about what makes a career meaningful, or this one about the importance of mentors.

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More deep human‑focused Wait But Why pieces:

Marriage decision: everything forever or never again
The Marriage Decision: Everything Forever or Nothing Ever Again

Why procrastinators procrastinate
Why Procrastinators Procrastinate

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The spectrum’s left side consists of people who fear jumping. They are “concrete feet,” and their trap is staying too long on the wrong thing. The right side consists of people who love jumping — they are “light‑footed” and their trap is the opposite: they are quick abandoners [11]. (You should especially watch out for concrete feet — psychologists note that at the end of life people most often regret living out of inertia. A common regret is “If only I’d quit earlier” (Top Career Regrets), and the most common advice for seniors is “Don’t stay in a job you don’t like”* (Most Important Life Lesson).)*

[11]: Of course, this spectrum is also highly relevant in interpersonal relationships.An article about becoming smarter
And a post about getting wiser

There are also some less self‑reflective “Wait, but why” articles:

And a few less self-reflect-y Wait But Why posts on:
Awkward social interactions
Awkward social interactions
The history of everything
The history of everything
Colonizing Mars
Colonizing Mars