The ultimate success metric is whether you get what you want out of life. But that’s harder than it sounds because it’s easy to try to copy someone who wants something you don’t.
I’ve seen this play out twice: An incredibly talented young writer with a big blog following joins a major media company where they quickly fizzled into irrelevance.
It was the same story each time: When the writer was young and independent they could write with their own voice, their own style, their own flair. They could run with their own intuition.
They were artists, which was what made them great.
Then they joined a big media company, which said, “That’s not how we do things here. Here’s our style book, you must follow it to a T. And meet Gordon, he’s your new editor. He will tell you what to write and when to write it. Good day, sir.”
They became employees, which was their downfall.
And these were very successful media companies. They knew what kind of writing worked and what their readers wanted. But of course it didn’t work out. What was right for the company was wrong for the writer. A talented person can quickly become mediocre when you force them to be someone they aren’t.
Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, there’s so much to learn from that.
It’s so common to on one hand recognize how much variety there is among people – different personalities, backgrounds, goals, skills – but on the other hand ask, “What’s the best way to do this thing?” as if there can be one universal answer for vastly different people.
One area this impacts people is with money, where more damage is caused not by dumb financial plans but by reasonable ones that just aren’t right for you.
How you invest might cause me to lose sleep, and how I invest might prevent you from looking at yourself in the mirror tomorrow. Isn’t that OK? Isn’t it far better to just accept that we’re different rather than arguing over which one of us is right or wrong? And wouldn’t it be dangerous if you became persuaded to invest like me even if it’s wrong for your personality and skill set?
Or take how we spend money. You like this, I like that. Who cares? It gets dangerous when you assume that if someone else is spending their money differently they either must be doing it better than you or doing it wrong. And that’s actually very common, because it’s easy to interpret someone spending money differently than you as an attack on what you’ve chosen to spend money on.
It’s possible to be humble and learn from other people while also recognizing that the best strategy for you is the one closest aligned with your unique personality and skills.
A few things happen when you do.
You do your best work and have the most fun when you’re not burdened by fear that someone else thinks you’re doing it wrong.
You measure how you’re doing against your personal benchmarks, which can both push you to your potential and prevent you from chasing someone else’s.
You have a much better shot of getting what you want out of life. Which, again, is all that really matters.
