Prioritize interesting work so you can work on interesting things
The most successful people I've met always have projects outside their day jobs.
The people I’ve met who have found the most professional fulfillment are interested in the work they do, and therefore motivated to improve by the work itself.
This sounds simple, but in my experience these attributes are more rare than not.
People who meet this criteria are not necessarily the wealthiest, smartest or most successful on paper. They are certainly not exclusive to C-suite executives either.
The people I know like this are mostly early in their careers. In many cases they are still discovering their own potential. But when someone prioritizes — and so improves at — what interests them, they adopt something like a virtuous tunnel vision.
This serves to both insulate you from what other people say, and it focuses you on something non-consensus.
Indeed, those who find something that interests them enough to mute the chatter of friends and peers on more conventional paths are very lucky.
Without this tunnel vision, it’s hard to ignore other people who think you are doing something dumb or wrong. It only takes a few voices to prevent you from doing interesting work.
This year, it’s been great meeting with journalists and creators who wanted to work at my startup. In these conversations, I always try to determine what drives them and what they are working toward.
The most useful question here that I’ve found is asking whether they are working on anything outside their 9 to 5 job. I don’t look for a specific answer, but I do want to hear something concrete.
Maybe it’s a blog or a podcast they are building. Some side hustle they are working to turn full-time.
Most people have an internal compass that points externally — prestige, money, brand name. However, the type of person I’d want to work with lacks that instinct altogether.
These are the people spending time on projects outside work.
Individuals’ interests are niche and varied, so the people who choose to pursue them as a livelihood find themselves on an isolated, non-consensus trajectory.
Ideally, if you are so interested in the work at hand, being non-consensus doesn’t matter. External doubt and early detraction is relegated to noise, and the work gets better over time.
To be clear, the best entrepreneurs almost always have the qualities I’m describing, but plenty of people who don’t build their own companies do, too. Having a fulfilling career, I think, happens as a consequence of working on something you can’t help but prioritize.
Everyone has to work, after all. But it’s almost impossible to do excellent work you don’t care about.
Might as well work like mad on what holds your interest to create the opportunity to do interesting work.
Talk to you next week.
Phil Rosen
Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, Opening Bell Daily
