“The thing that makes someone swipe right on you on Tinder may not be what you want to be in the long run”
Seth Godin
Imagine you’re one of the top experts in your field. You’ve got amazing insights and talents into your work. And other people recognize it. So much so, that a top company approaches you to lead their division. And they’ll give you $1 billion in company value for the position. What would you immediately do?
There’s a market of opportunity in the modern world. So much, that it’s actually easy to forget. We see the opportunity readily available to us. The one that promises to open us to new doors. New experiences. New growth. And of course, it’s going to look great to other people.
The easy thing, of course, is to seize the opportunity. Why wouldn’t you? Everyone is saying it’s the right approach. Other people would love to have that opportunity. It seems like the obvious choice.
Seth Godin was the inventor of e-mail marketing. He’s well known for writing over 10 New York Times best-sellers about marketing and business. He’s an accomplished individual. But he doesn’t have a job. And one day, he was approached for a job position at a large company with $1 billion worth of stocks.
And he turned it down.
Why would someone turn down a billion dollar job offer? What does it mean to do so? And what better opportunities does that actually unfold?
The Page With An Ego
Greg McKeown is able to describe in his book Essentialism a philosophy of the same name. And the principle of essentialism isn’t just what opportunities are worth taking. It’s about what opportunities are not worth taking. What McKeown notices is that with the pressure to do more, appear more successful, have more on your LinkedIn, people take certain actions that lead them on a path different than where they wanted to go.
Because when you’re successful in one small way, other opportunities open up, and it’s hard to deny those opportunities. Especially when it seems like the right choice for the average person. And most of all because it’s easy to see it as the “safe” choice. That you’re insecure that you have some lifestyle that people won’t like.
So when Godin was presented with virtually a billion dollar job offer with remarkable power and impact, he thought to himself: what does mean for my work? Does this accomplish the goals I wish to achieve? How does it affect the work I’m already trying to do?
And when he realized that the path that was open to him would lead him on a different direction than where he wanted to go, he denied it.
And why wouldn’t he? If you’re on a flight to New York to meet family for Christmas, and you get a free ticket to the Bahamas, do you abandon your family trip just cause someone else seems enticing?
I do think most people ask themselves the same questions as Godin. That’s not the issue. The issue is the hesitation in the answer. We tell ourselves “Well, it’s a free ticket. How could I miss this…” It’s a strange fear of missing out combined with the opinions of everyone else telling you what they would do if they were you. That all pushes us to come to some new justification for something as if it were natural.
But they aren’t you. In a vacuum one decision may seem objectively better. But everything here as an opportunity cost. And you have your own motivations and considerations. You have to be willing to prioritize what’s important and what’s not. The cost of something great can be greater than itself. And it’s up to you to determine that.
Self-Election
I’ve never made a Tinder bio. But I’m curious what it would be like if I said I try to sleep ~9 PM everyday. Certainly not going to get a lot of right swipes that way. Certainly there will be people that I would’ve liked to interact with that I won’t get to. Is that really the right decision?
Play it out. Imagine I pretended I was different in my bio. What will happen in the long-run? The truth always emerges. And then there ends up being wasted time and expectations. So of course it doesn’t make sense for me to lie on that bio.
There’s an idea James Clear writes in his book Atomic Habits that each action we take is a vote on our own identity. Each time we go to the gym, we vote for being fit. Each time we maintain our sleep, we vote on being healthy. Everytime we watch a cat video, we vote on being unproductive. These votes accumulate over time and are scaled to form our habits which lead to our identity.
The curious thing is that these votes are important for other people as well. Because other people can view nothing but an image of ourselves. The story we tell in our bio or our resume. And that narrative leads to an expectation as to our motivations and abilities. Because inconsistency breaks the narrative, and we can’t have that.
The actions we take on a public stage become our biography. At least the ones people see. Taking a path because it seems like the right one even though you don’t like it, is just as bad as the false Tinder bio. The only reason to do so would be insecurity or because you seek short-term results. Neither of which I believe you actually want.
Ensure that the opportunities you decide to take aren’t so people view you more highly or because they’re the ones people expect of you. Take them because you’re motivated to take them. Because they lead you to your destination. Because when you decide to make clear who you are truthfully, you can trust then that the only opportunities that will open up, are the right ones for you. If that job position with $1 billion is the right path for you, take it. Otherwise, it’s in your interest to keep searching.
As Godin noticed, “Once you turn down a billion dollars, it’s easy to prioritize the rest of your life.” Godin still doesn’t have a job. But he makes the impact he wants to make on his own terms. Simply act consciously and follow your principles, and the rest gets easier.
