ONE QUESTION
How Do We Measure Progress in Our Careers?
Money is a shitty metric for work. Only you can find the right one.
“I wonder if you’d help me,” you wrote. “How do you measure progress in a person’s career?” you asked. You feel “that time is running out” and you’ve not achieved as much as you would have liked to. You’re successful enough in your career, working at a hot pre-IPO company, and yet you work nearly nonstop and most weekends at a place that seems to be churning through people rather than bringing out the best in people. Including yourself. And you wanted advice.
Your question struck me, because I’ve been pondering something similar.
I wrote you right back, to remind you that, first, life is long. At 29 years old, you are just getting started. You are not out of time. Despite stories of 19-year-old startup founders like Mark Zuckerberg, the fact is that the average age of a successful entrepreneur is 45. And while you likely recognize a certain “Hallelujah” song, you might not know that at your age, its creator, Leonard Cohen, didn’t imagine he would be a singer; he started that career at age 33. And while Beyoncé started her career earlier than you, we can collectively see her craft advancing and her genius shining brighter than before in both Lemonade and…
