Week 2. You guys made it. This weeks theme, for the most part but not entirely, is based around career. A walk in the park compared to 7 questions about death. Sorry about that. Now, should you be stuck on the age old question “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” hopefully these questions will help get the ball rolling in the right direction. But I already know what I want to do. Cool story, but that still doesn’t mean that these questions are useless or won’t provided extra insight. At the end of the day, answering these questions is only half the battle. Should you get a spark or be on to something, none of this means shit without taking directed action. Take the time for yourself, sit down, and answer these 7 questions. Easy enough.
1.) What is your idea of success?
2.) When you hear the word success, who is the first person that comes to mind?
3.) Why do you do what you do?
4.) What 3 professions / people do you envy the most and why? This should go without saying, but for this question, please don’t pick people like the Kardashians. I hate that I even have to say that, but I mean…
5.) What problems do you want to solve in the world? If your answer is something like “I want to help people,” extrapolate on that. How do you want to help people? What would you being doing if you were starting out on a clean slate? You get it.
6.) “So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months? Sometimes, you have to actually go through the complex, 10-year trajectory. But it’s at least worth asking whether that’s the story you’re telling yourself, or whether that’s the reality.”
This question is taken from Peter Thiel and is one of the most important questions that I picked up from Tim Ferriss’ “Tools of Titans.”
7.) What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive?
“Everything involves sacrifice. Everything includes some sort of cost. Nothing is pleasurable or uplifting all of the time. So the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days.
If you want to be a brilliant tech entrepreneur, but you can’t handle failure, then you’re not going to make it far. If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the 80-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you.
What unpleasant experiences are you able to handle? Are you able to stay up all night coding? Are you able to put off starting a family for 10 years? Are you able to have people laugh you off the stage over and over again until you get it right?
What shit sandwich do you want to eat? Because we all get served one eventually.
Might as well pick one with an olive.”
This is a direct question from https://markmanson.net/life-purpose and basically what he’s getting at is “Everything sucks, some of the time.” That in life, no matter what we do, our dream job so to speak, it’s going to suck. Some of the time. So you better pick your favorite flavor of shit sandwich because no job you pick is going to be amazing 100% of the time.