Success (in career) is so overrated

One question asked to each child, across geographies, is what you want to be in your life. Anyone reading this would be no different. Assuming you reached that goal (hence reading this article on LinkedIn J), one important question that comes to mind is “what next?”

Rather the question came to me immediately after my first job – “Now what?”

After almost 2 decades, I strongly feel – “success”, especially in one’s career, is too overrated. No I don’t mean to demotivate you, if you are in a profession where you are not contended and still have the fire to go on, then that’s great.

But more and more people I talk to, are not really clear what to do next. If earning good money and having good career is the final frontier then what to do once you are done with that? I think lot of folks are facing this issue and are quite lost. Searching happiness in food, outings, vacations and other ‘instantly gratifying’ stuff.

Another problem with ‘success in career’ is, target is achieved quite early in one’s life span, may be 30 - 35 years

Shouldn’t there be a more important goal. By ‘more’ I don’t mean just ‘more powerful’, but ‘more’ in ‘number’. Something that takes you further from there. So here we come to the point, (actually there are 2 points but discussing second one here will make the post too long).

Apart from ‘career success’ one needs to have other goals. Especially in the midlife, instead of focusing on building more wealth; focus on achieving something else (wealth making might be part of it, but not essential). Sounds strange? Then, looks like, you missed the whole open source revolution in the last decade.

It’s the feeling of accomplishment which keeps you going, keeps you busy

Goals can be simple – Hobby, Fitness target, learning something new, doing something totally outside your career choice (teaching, gardening, Solar module consultant, any other weird sounding stuff). 'Weird' not because of anything wrong with these activities, but because you never thought about them, anything that's out of your comfort zone. (not outside your 'liking' zone)

So, stop reading and start doing something. Or may be read more, found something related and interesting - https://medium.com/skilluped/8-timeless-skills-to-learn-now-in-under-8-hours-to-change-your-life-forever-75e7b339373a