Thinking About Success

I'm gradually coming out of the full-time employee mode, and it makes me think of things I never considered before. Recently, I started wondering what success means to me.

Back when I was employed, I didn't have to think about this. Success was easy to measure. It was the tasks I marked as done, the projects I delivered, and how well my team performed. There was always a metric I could optimize, so why question it?

Digging deeper, I found one more thing. Working for startups gave me a goal to look for: making it big, whatever this means.

It's cool to imagine having a startup success story as part of your LinkedIn profile. Some people even describe themselves as an "ex-COMPANY" employee to indicate this. It's tempting to believe you can impact this success if you work hard and contribute.

Somehow, I ignored that 99% of startups fail miserably. Keeping this in mind daily would be pretty depressing, though. Why try if there's little chance of success? Assuming you're in the 1% is more comfortable and motivating.

VCs invest in tens (hundreds?) of startups, hoping one or two will become big enough to make it worthwhile. It's a lottery even for people who specialize in picking the next unicorn.

You get to work for maybe ten startups in your lifetime. You can pick only those that need your skills and are happy to hire you. How likely are you to choose the one that wins? And how much impact can you have on the result?

It took me an embarrassingly long time to fully grasp how dangerous it is to tie my idea of success to the company's success. But I know I'm not the only one, as I've seen others count on it, try hard to help make it happen, and burn out in the end.

Put like this, it seems dumb to adopt this as a way of thinking. But the "What if...?" scenario I imagined was powerful. I wanted to believe that the company's success meant success for me. And you'll hear this stated as a fact at every startup. It's the key employee motivation mechanism, although how exactly employees benefit is often vague. Even if it's all talk, why question something you see on a slide at the all-hands? They must know what they're doing.

Anyway, I realized I'm no longer motivated by the same idea of success. In the past, I would look forward to making it big with my projects, but not anymore.

I want to build things. I want to see something happen, no matter how well it does. I can finally enjoy simply playing with ideas in software, music, writing, or anything else. I haven't felt like this for a long time.

I want to see Three Dots Labs release new trainings. I want them to be successful financially, but I'm not motivated by running the biggest sale ever. Not to mention thinking about selling the company. I want to see things happen and enjoy the process.

After writing this down, the feeling seems familiar. It's obvious. I played with ideas and worked on my projects long before starting my first job. It's the same intrinsic motivation and fulfillment I used to enjoy, and it's returning.