People are terrified of getting stuck in a job–of working hard at something and then being hit with regret about it later on.
It is an interesting cultural phenomenon. So many young people have this terror of getting sucked into a time vacuum when they start working hard at something. But if you actually talk to people who have spent years of their lives working very hard towards something, none of them regret it, even if they don’t work in that field anymore.
Whether it was working to build a company that eventually fails, learning a career they eventually leave or pursuing a craft they eventually tire of, people who work hard at something for extended periods of time always get value from the experience. It always leads to tangential opportunities that they didn’t originally see coming.
Working hard on one thing doesn’t make you stuck to that thing. It doesn’t limit your options, it radically expands them.
For more on this idea, check out this episode of the Office Hours podcast:
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