What we tell ourselves during sub-optimal decision-making: “I’ll learn a lot”
Last week, I was talking with someone who had spent the last 15 years of his life at a prestigious Wall-Street bank. He had recently gone through a divorce and realized that he wasn’t spending as much time with his son as he’d like. Last year, he quit his job and spent a few months figuring out a new path.
Unprompted, he reflected: “Looking back, I’m not sure if it was the right decision to be a banker, but I learned a lot.”
A telling phrase
I’ve been hearing that phrase — “but I learned a lot” — all the time recently. It comes up often in grad school as friends reflect back on their internships. Often used in the extended phrase: “I don’t think I’d go back there full-time, but I learned a lot.”
I’ve started to think that the future tense of the phrase — “but I’ll learn a lot” — can be a powerful predictor of future regret.
Let’s take an all-too-common example: a friend is considering taking a job in <start-ups/big tech/banking/consulting>. Given what that person has talked about since you’ve known them, this job seems like an about-face decision. When you ask why they want to do it, they say “I’m not sure what I want to do, but I know I’ll learn a lot in the role.”
… the future tense of the phrase — “but I’ll learn a lot” — can be a powerful predictor of future regret.
To be clear, I believe banking, consulting, big-tech, and start-ups can be rewarding and meaningful career paths. Some of the leaders I admire the most I met in management consulting. It takes an admirable level of selflessness to be able to put away one’s ego and fully dedicate a life of service to a client’s success.
When considering a career path in consulting, I’ve always found it more compelling when someone reflects that “I think I’ll like the day-to-day work” or “I’m better suited to be an advisor than an operator” or “I like solving many challenges in an industry rather than going deep on a single one.”
What leads to regret?
Although, we never really know what we’ll like in our careers until we try it, I’d argue that learning for “the sake of learning” leads to longer-term regret rather than picking something intentionally to learn.
There are some career “trains” that are hard to board, like the more “traditional” paths (e.g., Engineering @ Google/Facebook, Strategy @ Bain/McKinsey) that often require a degree from a well-known computer science program or business school to enter. But once someone is on the train, it can be surprisingly hard to get off. Lifestyles adapt to the increased pay. Friends and co-workers have similar mindsets. The allure of the next challenge on the ladder is just ahead.
Life ticks by.
The Attention Economy
Albert Wenger writes in his new book, A World After Capital, that at first, land was the most scarce human good, and then the scarcity shifted to capital. Now with the onslaught of content, attention has become the most scarce and valuable. We are in the midst of shifting from a industrial society (scarce capital) to a knowledge society (scarce attention).
Today, we walk around with smart phones and computers that constantly demand our attention — a new email, a notification from Facebook, a text message. The tech companies have gotten scarily good at hijacking our attention to increase “engagement” on their sites.
Next time you’re waiting in line for a coffee — look around at everyone hunched over on their iPhones. When you’re waiting for the traffic light to turn green, notice the urge to grab your device. There’s always something new to learn on your phone.
Knowing that our time and attention is scarce — how do you choose to spend your days? What do you want to learn in the arc of your career? In your life? There’s more knowledge in the world than we could ever absorb. Is the goal “to learn” — or is it to be intentional about what we learn? Cultivate a sense of purpose in what we choose to learn.
We are where our attention is. Learning just “to learn” will likely result in a lot of disjointed lessons, skimming the surface of life. Perhaps more importantly: not all learnings are equal.
Put more bluntly: our world would “learn a lot” by engaging in a nuclear war or by electing a dictator in a country — but is this a level of suffering that we’d want for humanity? I’d strongly argue that it’s not.
In the end, the way we live our days is how we spend our lives. Next time you’re compelled to say “but I’ll learn a lot,” question whether you’ve thought through the decision fully. Perhaps the phrase is a signal that you are making a non-intentional, sub-optimal decision.
In The Attention Economy, what we choose to learn will increasingly define who we are.
