(Under/Over)estimating Trade-Offs
Life is about making trade-offs.
Choosing to watch a movie with your friends instead of studying for the exam because you value the time with your friends more than your test score is a trade off. Or, choosing to study Arts instead of Science because even though Science will get you a higher paying job, Arts will fill your soul is a trade off.
But I did not know, that as you grow up, the trade-offs become more difficult, and more consequential. You have to be very careful while making a decision. And still manage to not fall into paralysis by analysis. As you grow older, the room for experimentation reduces, as you shoulder more responsibilities, and gather age on your side.1
All of this happens sneakily in the background as you go about your days. Until one day, you realise, ‘Uh oh, what have I done?’.
The conundrum at the heart of it
Here is my conundrum.
Proposition One: I’ve always believed that if you are smart enough, almost no normative force2 can stop you from doing what you want. What i mean by that is if a lawyer wants to become a product head at a startup/ Big Tech - they will do whatever is necessary to pass the basic threshold of securing an interview and then if they’re good enough, they will get the job. I firmly believe in this. Primarily because I refuse to believe that the human life is so rigid and boring that we have to be confined to the choices most of us made in our late teens. But secondarily because I have seen numerous people doing exactly this. Switching careers, giving up a lucrative career for more independence, not working a salaried job for intellectual freedom3 and whatnot.
Proposition Two: Even though switching careers, starting something entirely new in late part of your career is possible, it is extremely difficult. If you’re switching careers, you have to start afresh. You lose out on all the hard work, experience and money. No matter how passionate you are about what you want to switch into, until that point you switch into doing something entirely different for work, it will have been a hobby and no one takes a hobby seriously. The normative forces of the market sideline career nomads who love trying different things out, experimenting with their time and experiences. It is almost as if you have to continue doing whatever your first job is if you want to progress in your career, and keep making a steady amount of money.
By the time you realise you may want to do something else, it may already be too late. Not that just, essentially you’re making a decision on your estimation of how your work and life will be. Sure, you talk to people, get as much data points as you can, but it is not the same as experiencing it. And if you look back, I’m sure you’ll find that your estimation of something has been completely off the mark from what it actually was. In that sense, you can never actually know if switching into a different career/ starting something brand new is the right decision.
So going back to the start of this piece, as you grow older the trade offs you make become increasingly difficult to make and are more consequential than the ones you made earlier. I did not have to think a thousand times before deciding to enroll in a Physics course (something nobody in my family, or friends had done). I did not have to think a hundred times before I switched careers entirely by enrolling into a law course (again something nobody in my family had done). But every move I make henceforth seems to be much more consequential, limiting me further, reducing my horizons. And as more responsibilities pile up on you (taking care of your parents, supporting your own family and children) your room for taking risk also reduces.4
It could well be that this is an illusion in my mind, and these trade offs have the same impact in the long run as the ones I took before. But at least this time around they feel much heavier and more serious. But keeping all that aside, let’s condense this into a few lines.
You want to do something other than what you’re currently doing. You’re up against two things. One, are the normative forces of the market that make it more difficult for you to switch. Second, is the impossibility of actually knowing how the switch will impact your life and work.
The answer to one is that if you’re smart enough, and want something bad enough, there is no mountain high enough. People do it all the time. And if you can’t bring yourself to do it, for whatever reasons, maybe it is not your calling after all. Which is also okay (this doesn’t mean you’ll have to do what you’re currently doing forever, but at least what you thought you wanted to do, may not be your calling).
The answer to two is tricky. The information asymmetry is huge. Cognitive biases infest our thinking. Here a cost benefit analysis is very helpful. List down the things you want, and how each options weighs. But you’ll realise at the end of the day, most decisions are not obvious, and you have to take a leap of faith and stick to whatever you decide. Use the regret minimization, and reversible/irreversible decision framework.
This is where the voice in your head comes in. It is cliche. But it is your conscience. Listen to it.5
You already have the answer
The voice is your answer.
We often complicate decisions by factoring in too many elements, and uncertainties. And I am not saying this in the abstract. This has happened to me, and people I know. Taking any decision, after you start working is very consequential and should be taken wisely. But most of us know what we actually want in life. And there will always be a few things we want so badly that trump all other things we desire. The real work is figuring out what those things are. Is it money, power, status, meaning, God?
By the way, another thing to consider is that you will never be entirely sure of what you want (or at least I think so. I may be wrong and maybe people know exactly what they want). At best you will have a sense of liking a few things better than the others. In that sense, most of the decisions you take will not be watertight. They cannot be (due to the information asymmetry we spoke about earlier). And if I think about it, they should not be. It will eliminate all excitement in life, if you knew exactly how your life will be. We exist in a decisional gooey space where we don’t know most things. Much like an electron revolving around the atom’s nucleus, existing somewhere in the vicinity but we can’t know exactly where.
But i think the voice is your answer. And the answer may be wrong, we cannot know. It may turn out to be the best thing you’ve ever done. We cannot know. But it is the only answer you have, and I believe that you owe it to yourself to follow it. Know that it is a privilege to do this, and most cannot. Also know that this will derail the perfect notions of career that you have. But as my dear sister said:
Linear is boring.
Here’s to having the courage to be non-linear.
The workplace is extremely anti old people. And I found it shocking that anyone who is 40+ is considered old. See here.
By normative force I mean conventions of the world. That a law graduate can only be a lawyer. Than an engineer can only be an engineer. That you cannot shift careers in your 30s. That you cannot become achieve things before a certain age etc.
As far as I remember from our conversation, one of my heroes, Dr. Ajay Shah has not worked a salaried job since 1999.
Maybe this is why people should take more risks when they are in their 20s. Knowing that responsibilities will only increase and not decrease, one must use that as a means to motivate oneself perhaps.
Not when it asks you to do something illegal, mind you.