I’m writing this specifically for people that tell me they have a desire to “do their own thing” but don’t have the boldness of Elon Musk.  I write this for normal people like me that have the desire to take a chance on themselves but might be a bit scared or are terrified of going into debt. I write this as a reminder of the many good things the corporate world taught me and that if I had appreciated them and looked for them more actively, I might have been able to bet on myself a bit sooner.

A bit of caution before diving in.  This is not your grandfather’s guide to the working world.  Part of the reason people caution against entering the corporate world is that if you just float through the experience you won’t end up in a good spot.  I’m going to nudge you to take a bit more of an unconventional approach…

#1 Full-time employment enables you to develop skills you might not have the discipline to develop

People often say things to me like “don’t you think you are able to be successful in self-employment because you worked at X?”  To someone that has spent time in the corporate world, it seems as if this is the way things work. You often need certain titles or experience to get access to the next job. But working on your own the only thing that really matters are the underlying skills you learn at those jobs.

In my time in consulting, I spent thousands of hours doing research, conducting interviews, learning how to communicate clearly, and working in teams.  In the moment this often seemed pointless but looking back I’m glad I did a specific kind of work for a long stretch of time. The deliberate practice helped me develop a set of foundational skills that has given me the confidence to experiment in new areas like 1-on-1 coaching, online course creation, podcasts and writing online.

Almost every type of job will offer the opportunity to develop these kinds of foundational skills and it’s easier to find something that is enjoyable to do with a skill you already have than trying to develop a skill around an interest.  This is why finding your passion is misleading.  Once you find it you then need to do the hard work of learning a skill to activate it.

In full-time work, there are endless opportunities to learn new things. You just need to look for it. In a large organization, almost everyone will know about something that you don’t know about. It would be impossible not to have people in your organization that could teach you something about marketing, finance, accounting, communication, managing others, or resolving conflict.  Not to mention broader life skills like parenting, dealing with health challenges, or relationships.  You just need to stay curious and keep asking questions. 

Steph Smith, who is a prime example of someone who gets the best out of the corporate world, talks about this in a similar essay,

Working in my “day job” allows me to continuously learn from people who are smarter than me, and get paid for it. I’m also faced with challenges that I simply wouldn’t encounter with my side projects and I often need to learn how to solve these challenges alongside others.

The key to all of this is to make sure that you are in an environment that has a culture of learning and helping people out. If you aren’t in one of those environments you need to make a change as soon as possible.

#2 Figuring out what you like doing is hard but there are more opportunities in a company than you think

Figuring out what you like doing while also trying to build your own business is hard.  The uncertainty and fear of failure will steer you away from things you might enjoy doing over the long run and towards things that can make money or are in fashion. 

Yet people still advise this route because they have created a false comparison between a dull corporate path and a dynamic entrepreneurial path. There are downsides to both paths but with the right amount of ingenuity, you can use your full-time job as a way to explore all different types of work.

The first step to this is to quickly build trust with your core team.  Find out what kinds of behaviors cause everyone to worry and become good at those things.  Even better if you volunteer to become the go-to person for those tasks.  If you take away someone else’s pain and anxiety you will usually end up with a lot of freedom in how you are able to spend your time at the company.

Next make a list of all the things you might want to learn about and make a list of people who can teach you those things.  Curious about facilitating and public speaking? Get coffee with the training manager.  Ever wonder how marketers think?  Reach out to the marketing director.  To do this, literally just email them and ask.  I have given this advice to many young people and they were always surprised that you could just do this.  But think about it.  People that have been in their job for a long time often don’t have a lot of people who are curious to learn about their path or journey unless they are very senior.  Ask people that are senior enough to control workflow but not too senior that people are constantly asking them for favors already.

Next, if you are still curious and might want to try out some of the work make a small offer of help.  Most people in mid-level roles in organizations have too much work to do and can always use some help, especially if you do it without a need for a lot of direction.  While I was working in consulting, I volunteered to create training materials for the learning manager in my office.  This had nothing to do with my job but I had a passion for mentoring others and wanted to learn more about how her team thought about training.  After helping her do an hour of this busy work on top of my “regular” job, she saw I was serious.  This led to me being asked to join the learning faculty to help facilitate trainings around the globe.  The links between this work and some of the things I do with online learning now would be impossible to dismiss.  I just wish I had sought out more of these opportunities.

In some cases, this strategy can even lead to you discovering a job you want to be doing and the desire of doing you “own thing” might fade away.  This is the story of many of the people in full-time jobs that enjoy their lives.  They created their own path.  Its worth finding out if this might work for you too.

#3 You can get a good understanding of how things happen in modern institutions, including how power works

Young people seem to be a bit more clear-eyed than my generation was graduating in the mid-2000s. I naively thought that in a big organization, most people were focused on doing good work and wanted the best for each other.  On the surface, this seems true but as I spent more time in multiple organizations I started to realize that who succeeds in a company is often just as much tied to results as it is political abilities and an understanding of power.  I am terrible at those games but when I became aware that there were different games than just being good I became a bit less frustrated with what was happening around me.

In addition to understanding power, organizations are a great way of understanding how the world works or doesn’t.  People who have been watching the bungled pandemic responses of many countries are often outraged and react with their version of how things “should be.”  It’s great to have ideals and a vision but even better to pair that with an understanding of how things fail, why four-week projects can take years, and how incentives can create all sorts of unintended consequences.  

The key is to observe all of this with a healthy detachment.  This is easier said than done.  Many people end up distraught by unfairness and other shenanigans in the workplace.  Observe the dynamics and learn why people are doing what they are doing but don’t make it your own purpose.  As I’ve written before, learn the game, don’t become the game.

Another situation worth experiencing but escaping as fast as you can is working with a bad manager.  Use this for inspiration for what you hope to avoid.  Think about the incentives at play and try to understand why this person might behave a certain way (there often aren’t that many incentives for people to be better managers) and then make sure you don’t fall into the same traps when you have your own team.

It’s popular in the corporate world for senior people to praise these experiences as something worth seeking out.  “Everyone should find a job for two years where you can really struggle.”  This is terrible advice and has more to do with this leader’s own confirmation bias than a deep truth about the paths people should take.  Learn from it.  Try to understand it.  But get out of it as fast as possible.

#4 There are a lot of people that live fulfilling lives and have full-time jobs. You might be one of them.

There are many people that are living fulfilling lives and have full-time jobs.  It may be a surprise to some people but many of these people don’t have a secret monetizable side gig nor a dream to start one.  These people typically have a range of activities at work and out of work that bring them meaning.  They may spend some of their day job mentoring people or even acting as someone that others can vent to.  They may focus on things outside of work like spending time with their family, learning things for fun, volunteering in their community, or on a hobby once a week.

One of the best things I did throughout my career (though I wish I did more) was to go up to people that seemed to be thriving.  These are the people that everyone loves working with and that people admire.  They stand out from the others with a certain “aliveness” that is hard to deny. They may not be the actual leaders of your company.  In fact, they may be some of the lowest level people at the company.

Go talk to these people.  Tell them that you admire their positive energy and ask them where it comes from.  Without fail, there is always an interesting story.  These people always have an experience that changed their life, a mentor that helped them approach life with a new perspective or a deeper purpose that drives them in their life.  Try to spend time with these people.  Ask them for book recommendations.  Keep asking questions about their story and surround yourself with these people.  

They are the role models you need no matter which path you take.

#5 Building a life off the default path takes time.  Stable paychecks enable you to build savings so you can buy more time to figure it out

One of the biggest traps of entrepreneurship or self-employment is mistaking the whole purpose of the journey for making money.  Money can be a good motivator but when you are pursuing something on your own you need a lot more motivation than if you were doing the work as a job.  Most people want to do things that they actually like doing. Sometimes it takes entrepreneurs decades of work and eventual burnout to figure this out.  Having some savings from the corporate world can help you experiment for a couple of years without the pressure of needing to make money as soon as possible.

This is the path Kyle Kowalski took as he explored uncertainty and meaning through his writing after leaving the corporate world in 2018. He is grateful that he was able to build some “runway” that has enabled him to explore without the immediate pressure to monetize:

There is no question in my mind that I would not be doing what I’m doing right now if I hadn’t worked in the corporate world for a decade. Saving some money from that time is also buying me “solopreneurial runway” for a few years.

I always tried to be frugal no matter how much I made.  Perhaps this was me knowing deep down that I wanted the option to walk away down the road.  I’m glad I saved a lot of money and invested aggressively in all my jobs.  Many people suggest investing 5-10% of your income in your 401k.  I did 20-30% every year.  I used this as a way to artificially lower my salary so that I could learn to live on less.  

When I did quit my job I was able to commit to at least a year of self-employment because of the savings I had.   This enabled me to experiment with a variety of different types of work not to mention extended breaks of non work.  It sounds crazy but if I spent all my money and only wandered around for a year and read a bunch of books I still would have considered it a success.  To me there is more to life than work.

I’m always grateful for the money I was able to save in the corporate world because I’ve been able to take a slower and more interesting path than if I had to focus on making a lot of money immediately.  Some people think of it as “losing” their savings but I re-frame it as a gift from my past corporate self telling me, “go explore and see where you end up Paul!”

#6 A lot of jobs are not that hard and you can stay energized by limiting the amount of hours you work

There is a famous study run at a consulting firm that looked at the link between hours and promotions.  There were three groups. Those who worked the most, those who negotiated fewer hours, and a third group of people who worked less but never told anyone.

Who got promoted the most?  Predictably the first group but also at similar rates were the people that worked a lot less and didn’t raise attention to this fact.  The moral of this story?  Don’t ever accept that “this is the way things have to be.”  Many in the corporate world are good at conforming and look around for cues for what they are supposed to do.  Instead, you should always start with the question, “what is possible?”

This question drove Diania Merriam to negotiate a two month leave of absence to go on a pilgrimage across Spain instead of a pay raise.  She was a bit scared to ask but surprised when her boss said yes right away.  In 2020, many companies have finally woken up and even formerly stuffy companies like Citigroup are offering 4-weeks paid to work with a non-profit and 3-month sabbaticals after five years.

Working shorter workweeks are also much more possible than people realize, even at some of the most hard-working companies.  I spent long stretches at companies like McKinsey, BCG, and GE working 35-40 hours a week while still doing great work and not dropping the ball.  I was just obsessive about doing the things that mattered and doing them well.

Corporate norms can also drive perverse incentives such as keeping people glued to a desk surfing the web rather than reading a book they might be interested in.  You can make the case that many books will help you at work so never be afraid to pull out a book and read at your desk.  If anyone asks why you’re reading a book just respond, “aren’t we here to learn?”  In my final full-time job, I used to block off a private “freedom hour” meeting each morning to spend on writing before I started my “real” work.

The lesson? Don’t create prisons for yourself that may not exist. Look for ways to do the things you want to be doing. It may be easier than you think.

The Bottom Line: Defend Your Energy & Cultivate Possibility

Blindly following the norms of the corporate world and working long hours every week on something that you’re not excited about is one of the fastest ways to destroy your energy, numb your imagination, and convince yourself that you can not do anything other than stay in your current job or path. 

This is why some people advise against this path. However, with a little creativity on your part, I believe that you can get a lot of good out of your time in the corporate world. 

The key is making sure you stay focused on the right things.

The most useful metric I’ve found is not your title, your career progress, or compensation.  It’s your energy.  Defend your energy at all costs.  It’s good practice to have some regular reflection in which you can assess you energized you are about life.  I recommend setting a calendar reminder once a month and tracking it over time.  If it starts dropping it’s time to change things up.  It’s the only way you will be able to keep experimenting and staying open to the possibilities of life.

It may be hard to believe but the biggest barrier to carving a path that works for you is not access to opportunity or money, but your own imagination for what’s possible.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post Don’t Follow Your Passion, Work In The Corporate World First appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

She was probably right. I quit my first job at the gas station because I kept missing Patriots games. This was 2001. Looking back, it looks like a great decision — it was the start of the Brady-Belichick dynasty. But I was just being selfish.

However, that word — ambition — stuck with me. I knew deep down how much I was capable of and wanted to prove her wrong.

But I now realize the kind of ambition that drove me was not what my mother was talking about. She was talking about responsibility and ownership.

I was more worried about the kind of ambition that is seen as the path to success in today’s world — climbing the ladder, working at good companies, getting paid well.

In college, I spent a lot of time crafting myself to fit the mold of what I thought these companies wanted. At first, I wasn’t great at it, but I got better and better.

I was able to land jobs at top companies and then use those positions to land even better jobs. I was then accepted to one of the top grad schools in the country.

My resume made it look like I was crushing it, I was winning a game I like to call prestige bingo. But winning prestige bingo has nothing to do with doing what matters to you and deep down, I couldn’t shake that fact.

Losing It All

When I finished grad school I was on top of the world. I had earned two masters degrees from one of the top universities in the world.

Several months later I was waking up every day after 10 hours of sleep completely exhausted — I was muddling through each day. I spend my time trying to make it through work and the rest trying to figure out what was wrong with me. This was not how I envisioned my post business school career!

I eventually was diagnosed with a bad case of Lyme disease and began the road to recovery. As anyone who has dealt with health issues knows — there is a constant sense of uncertainty and I struggled to process it all. A supportive boss at work encouraged me to take a leave of absence just to get my head straight.

Without work I sat home for hours a day, focusing on my recovery. But I also experienced an overwhelming sense of loss. Not only the loss of my health but the loss of my career. I came to realize that my identity was tied up in my job, my career and my resume. Not only that, I realized that as my savings dwindled and my grad school loans still loomed, I was pretty much broke.

Yet, I had started to realize I had been deluding myself about what really matters. I didn’t have much money, but I had family that cared about me and cared more that I showed up rather than where I worked. I had achieved some modicum of career success but really hadn’t done much on my own. I was still scared to put my ideas into the world.

Deep down, I knew that the default formula of success was not going to work for me, but also started to realize that failure as we conceive it in the business world is mostly an illusion. Failure is impossible if you have your health, relationships and freedom to do things that matter.

The default path comes with certain assumptions — These are the jobs you should strive for, the promotions you should get, this is the salary you should expect, you should always try to do more!

The reality is, you can carve your own path. It just takes a bit of work. Over the next few years, I started to test out this belief, not without learning a few lessons along the way.

Crafting a new story

I continued to gain strength over several months and felt a renewed sense of energy. I may have had less energy than everyone else but my brain was moving a mile a minute.

I started to look around at some of my high-performing colleagues and ask are they truly happy? Is everyone just pretending? I asked myself — is there a better way? Is there a way to build a life instead of a career?

I started simple. I made a list of my priorities.

Number one was health. I had known what it felt like to lose my health and didn’t want to compromise on it ever again. My next inclination was to list career but then had the crazy idea that maybe my career should be last. I finished my list: second was relationships, third was fun & creativity and fourth was career. I still have a calendar alert that pops on my phone each morning with these priorities.

I use this simple list to make decisions. For example, I have said no to any type of job or opportunity that is going to force me to compromise my health. No amount of money is worth it. Second, I will never let work interfere with my relationships. I don’t cancel on the important people in my life.

This list makes people uncomfortable.

Shouldn’t you work as hard as possible early in your career? Isn’t that the path to success?

What if we already know a better way to define success?

In the 1970s, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan came up with what they called self-determination theory. They found three elements that helped maximize intrinsic motivation or doing work for its own sake. Those three elements are competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

The theory also helped explain why I felt so lost when I became sick. I was basing my success on a number of extrinsic rewards — the jobs, schools, degrees, prestige, and pay associated with my early career and when I had to leave my job — I had nothing deep down driving me. Deci and Ryan found that these types of rewards often backfire and undermine intrinsic motivation.

While recovering, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what was energizing me. I realized that I spent a lot of time mentoring people to make career changes and helping them make sense of the working world. I love helping people. I also would get so frustrated when people felt “stuck” in companies that treated them poorly. I realized a second big motivator for me was making the working world a better place. I started sharing this with people, saying yes to any opportunities that would enable me to learn more and taking some risks through a couple of side hustles.

Over the next three years, I pursued a number of experiments. Many freelancers tell me it often starts like this — years before they make a formal “leap.” My first side hustle was a career coaching business, after a career coach I met challenged me to put my dream into the world.

Taking this first step was terrifying, but it also taught me a vital lesson about the future of work. By stepping into uncertainty, creating new challenges and taking responsibility, you will naturally push yourself to learn and develop new skills at a rapid pace.

My second experiment was a group coaching event to help people tell their stories and try to find more meaning in their careers. The big lesson for me was realizing how much fun I had creating the content and tools and doing deep research on the topics I was most passionate about.

Over the next couple of years, I kept sharing my passion and looking for opportunities to build my skills. I volunteered to give a 45-minute talk on careers at my alma mater, I gave my first paid speech about careers in consulting and gave another speech at PwC as part of their coaching program for young professionals.

All of these experiments scared the crap out of me, but they were also exhilarating. It was the challenge and rapid skill-building that I wasn’t finding in the corporate world. Pieces of all these experiments have informed what I am currently focused on now — helping people navigate the future of work. Luckily as a freelancer, my life is now one experiment after another.

As I put my energy into the world — reading, writing and taking action (competence) I became more confident. As I connected with others with a shared mission, I felt part of something bigger (relatedness). As I started working on work I was excited by, I came alive (autonomy).

Deci and Ryan were geniuses.

Popping The Delusion

My eyes were on the verge of tears. I felt ashamed. I was sitting in my manager’s office and I knew what was coming. I had reflected on my own performance over the last six months and knew that while my work was great, I wasn’t being my best self at work. I was frustrated and wasn’t even close to being the positive influence on my peers I aspired to be.

Although I had started to tap into something deeper — something more aligned with my intrinsic motivation, that was happening mostly outside the confines of my day-to-day job.

My re-assessment of values and priorities was helping me figure out what mattered, but they left me an increasingly bad fit for the corporate world. When I talked about things that excited me — I found very few others that shared the same interests. When I came up with new ideas or experiments, I was told I was naive or that I needed to learn how things worked.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault…I was still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Around the same time, I had also been trying to position myself for a raise or promotion. I kept getting the responses “you need to be patient” or “you should be happy with what you have.” I was pissed. I was doing great work.

I’m also thankful that I didn’t get that raise or promotion. 

If I had gotten either, I would have been in a worse position. Deeper into a system that did not align with my values of how I wanted to live, create, or work. There was no one to blame. The onus was on me to carve my own path and create the conditions where I could thrive.

If you don’t get out now, you may end up like the frog that is placed in a pot of fresh water on the stove. As the temperature is gradually increased, the frog feels restless and uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out. Without being aware that a change is taking place, he is gradually lulled into unconsciousness.

(William Reilly, from Brain Pickings)

“What does a good life cost?”

There is no right way to leave full-time employment. While some people have ways to earn money before becoming a freelancer, it is mostly a leap of faith. After talking to my employer about my plan, I was able to negotiate a three month transition period.

During this time, I did all of the technical things required to start a company (detailed here). In talking to several people who were full-time freelancers, the most important thing seemed to be commitment. This part was easy for me. I had no intention of returning to the corporate world if I could help it.

…but what about rent?

The most popular question I got when I told people about my plan was “what about rent?” or “aren’t you worried you won’t make money?”

My conclusion: people worry about money a lot.

My second conclusion — A full-time paycheck warps our thinking. It makes us think that money is supposed to come in at regular periods. For most of history, this was not the norm.

There are many good things people get from employers. However, it is often at the cost of doing the work we want to do. We look at someone with a job that they hate and say “good job.” But at what cost?

What I realized was that happiness really has nothing to do with the stuff we have. We buy things because that is what everyone else is doing. We stop buying “two buck chuck” from Trader Joe’s not because we dislike it but because that’s not what you are supposed to do past a certain age. When we make decisions like this for more expensive things like our apartment, clothes, and other possessions, it means we become trapped in a job we hate.

So as I started looking at my finances as a freelancer, I realized I wanted to question everything. I started with the question “what does a good life cost?”

I reflected back to early in my career when I was barely saving a couple of thousand dollars a year. I loved my life! I still loved my life, but the lifestyle creep was real! It was the same happiness for a higher cost.

So I sat down with a spreadsheet challenged myself to answer that question. I was able to lower my cost of living $20,000 a year by making some simple changes and moving cities. All that meant was more time to commit to freelancing, more time to make mistakes and more time to learn.

Stumbling into a future of work mindset

The second chapter of my career started five years before I quit my job and had nothing to do with work. It started with me becoming progressively sick over six months and then a year-long battle to regain my health.

In that time I was forced to question everything I believed and was forced to look at the world, my life, and my career with a different lens.

This was the start of a personal “awakening” that pushed me into high gear to discover a different path. It took four years from the health crisis I faced until I took the leap to become self-employed, but what I learned along the way was priceless.

In the near future, I believe many of us will face this type of transformation — forced into the “future of work” without a path to follow. It is up to you whether you want to start planning for it today or have it take you by surprise. The quicker you face that challenge, the better you will be prepared for the future

I was lucky that my health crisis forced me to discover a mindset shift that has enabled me to better navigate the massive shifts happening in today’s economy. While I am excited, most people I talk to are stressed, anxious and are terrified at the idea of making a change.

We blame companies, bad managers, and even ourselves for our misery. At the macro level, we distract ourselves with stories of how robots will replace our jobs or how politicians limit our ability to succeed. This tells us more about how scared and unprepared we are for the future than the reality that there is more opportunity than ever.

I was never a great fit for the corporate world. The corporate world still defaults to rewarding people who prioritize money, status and power — to the benefit of few and increasing disillusionment of many. Going through the process of identifying my priorities and questioning what success meant helped me make decisions and focus my time on building towards a more sustainable future for my career and life.

Ten years into my career, I had no choice but to take the leap.

The future we are shifting to will be closer to what the firm Vega Factor has uncovered — that when people are at their best work feels like play, it has purpose, and helps you realize your potential. It will likely also lead to an awakening about how we are meant to live, spend our time and support each other.

I am excited about the future. By many lucky coincidences, I ended up working at the types of companies and having the types of experiences that gave me both the confidence and skills to be able to compete in this new economy.

My mission now is to put those skills to use to help others unlock their creativity and curiosity to do things that matter to them.

I aspire to help build the world that Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about when he said:

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

So instead of asking someone “what do you do?” let’s ask each other “what are you meant to be doing?”

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

The post My awakening: How I learned to harness my creativity, build the courage to quit my job, and start a new chapter of my life appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

Everyone has heard the statistic from Gallup that 70% of people are not engaged at work. This information is sad — but not useful in understanding how I can actually increase my own engagement.

I’ve often been a fan of creating my own self-assessments to measure how well I am aligned with my own leadership principles — in becoming the type of person I want to become in the workplace. Feedback from colleagues is valuable — but often aligned with a company culture that mindlessely supports principles that may or may not make sense for any type of long-term career success.

So when I read Culture Amp’s professional services benchmark — I was impressed by the individual questions they used to measure employee engagement. I took their questions they asked in a broader company context and applied them to myself:

Now every quarter I assess my engagement levels against these 10 areas both for my immediate team and role in the broader company.

It helps me assess what is energizing me and more importantly, what is sapping my energy. I can then think about what I should o next to address it.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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The post A quick ten question assessment of your own employee engagement appeared first on Boundless by Paul Millerd.

“Pursue your passion and you will never work a day in your life”

— Many people

For me, this was always a very vague notion, albeit one worth pursuing.

I’ve always had a restless spirit. I remember being in school when I was younger and throwing myself into doing well. Doing well and getting good grades was rewarding, but I never really had an answer to “What do you want to do when you grow up?” question.

That restless spirit stayed with me as I got older and transitioned into a productive, taxpaying adult. During my first corporate internship during college, I worked at a desk for 40 hours a week. I was dumbfounded by how little everyone really accomplished — It was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to get rid of that feeling.

I had a few more internships in other major companies and kept finding the same thing: Inefficiency and personal frustration. I was NOT finding what I wanted to do. This put me in a bit of a desperate state and I started looking everywhere for inspiration. I picked up Freakonomics one summer and could not put it down. It unlocked a period of creativity for me that hasn’t stopped ten years later.

Discovering my first passion was easy: A restless hunger for learning

With senior year looming, I sunk my energy into obsessively researching careers that might be a better fit for me than a corporate job. I came across strategy consulting and was immediately energized. Consulting firms were a place where you could work on some of the most challenging business problems and be surrounded by people who also crave learning at a incredibly fast pace. Why had nobody told me about consulting? This became my new goal.

With little preparation, I threw myself full-steam ahead into trying to get a full-time offer at a strategy consulting firm. I quickly built a massive spreadsheets of over 100 firms and tried to find every possible connection through family, friends or alumni that I could.

I ended up getting a number of phone interviews and four or five final round in-person interviews.

Bottom line: I got rejected from 100+ consulting firms

The following rejection is my favorite:

October 2006

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your interest in McKinsey & Company and your patience in awaiting our reply.

Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to extend an interview to you at this time. Our team’s decision was a difficult one given the strength of our applicant pool and the limited number of positions available. In the event that our hiring needs change, we will get in touch with you directly

On behalf of McKinsey & Company’s recruiting team, we wish you every success in your career.

All the best,

XXX

Recruiting Manager

McKinsey & Company

In the moment, the rejection hurt. But I didn’t let it impact my confidence. I knew I was capable and I had committed to this goal. So I kept applying. Two years two years later, I was sitting at my desk, working at that same firm, one of the top consulting firms in the world, McKinsey & Company.

I had made it, right?

In a sense, yes. I was proud to have achieved my goaI. However, I still had a certain bit of restlessness — I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do. I still had more learning to do.

It took me a few years after leaving McKinsey to understand how much the culture in my office had resonated with me. My peers were brilliant, kind and enthusiastic about learning. Team leaders were 100% supportive and mostly hands-off, letting me achieve the already high expectations that I had for myself. It was incredible. The problem? This culture was not the norm in the business world. I wanted to help create these environments elsewhere.

My second passion: Being a part of and building amazing communities and company cultures

The discovery of a third passion solidified for me only recently, but was accelerated by an experience I had in 2009. After I finally “broke into” consulting, others from UConn reached out to me for advice on how to do the same. One persistent and enthusiastic student stood out. He was determined to work in consulting. He was a bit late on application deadlines, but seemed undeterred. I was not as confident.

It was 2009 and the economy was in absolute shambles. This kid was a rock star and had enormous potential, but the opportunities were slim and all the jobs were going to students at the most prestigious schools. There was no sugar coating it. This was going to be hard.

I was impressed with his determination — he wanted to pursue consulting, even if that meant graduating without a job. Fortunately, his hard work paid off. With weeks to go prior to graduation, he received an offer at a consulting firm. Not only that, but it led to an impressive career in consulting and strategy. I’d now consider him a peer, at an equal level to the success I’ve achieved in my career. He may not have known it at the time, but he was inspiring to me — and still is. It gave me tremendous joy to play a part in helping someone so impressive achieve their goals. I had to do more.

Passion #3: Helping inspirational people achieve great things

I’ve only recently gained clarity on this. This has taken years of reflection and soul-searching, but it adds a lot of clarity in my future career choices. If I use these as a lens for my career choices, a lot of the decisions I made seem to make a lot more sense. Everything I’ve pursued checked at least one of the three boxes. For now, I’ll use these as a guiding force, but have no idea where it will take me. Here’s hoping I find new inspiration and passions down the road….

To summarize, the key learnings for me were:

1. Finding my passion really meant getting to know myself better. I did this through a combination of putting myself in different jobs and environments and combining that with reflection on my experiences, especially the most frustrating and exciting emotions

2. Passion does not equal a job title or company. Instead of defining my success based on a role or company I was working with, I focused on the behaviors and environments

3. Listen to your frustration or angst. I took notice of what frustrated me and what energized me. I tried to do less of the things that frustrated me and more of the things that excited me. Simple, but powerful.

41k+ Sold! (Top 1% Book) The Pathless Path is Paul's book about walking away from a "perfect" job with a promising future and starting over again. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and a deep dive into the history of our work beliefs, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to what he calls "the pathless path" - a new story for thinking about work in our lives. Learn More & Buy The Book Here

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