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Finding Your Success

The other night I was debating with a friend whether or not it was truly possible to have major success in your career without your job coming first. She believes it’s simply not possible. You’re either family oriented or job oriented, but something always must win. I was nearly persuaded. But after she left I thought about it some more, and decided it is possible to achieve major success and still put your family first. We just have different definitions of success.

What does a successful career mean to you? We tend to see people with lots of money, lots of power, lots of fancy shit, and important titles as being the definition of success. That is I suppose one way to look at it. Those people are often depicted as being on call for their job 24/7, Hong Kong on Monday, London on Friday, with never a moment’s rest. These are images that I myself am victim of accepting as what it means to be successful at one time or another.

As a little girl I remember picturing myself as CEO standing in the corner office in the high rise of some elaborate futuristic skyscraper with a headset in my ear making deals. Other days, I was a world renowned surgeon saving lives every day. Of course those are descriptions of successful careers, without a doubt. Those are also descriptions of intense, demanding careers where it is probably darn next to impossible to put your family first one hundred percent of the time. I mean, soccer practice or saving a life? Although I don’t know from experience since I’m neither a corner office CEO at a major corporation, nor a surgeon. But there are certainly a lot of other definitions of success. They’re just not as popular or glamorous.

I watched the pilot of a new show on the CW called “Hart of Dixie” and was further convinced that I was onto something. Yes, yes I know. But I love Rachel Bilson and the basic premise fits perfectly with this internal discussion I was having with myself. In the show, the character, Dr. Hart, is an ambitious, driven doctor soon to be cardio-thoracic surgeon at the best hospital in NYC who suddenly finds herself in small town Alabama as a general practitioner. The show sets you up to understand that over the course of the season she will come to realize that she doesn’t need the fancy hospital in NYC or a fancy title to be happy. In fact, that’s not who she really is inside, simply who she thought she was supposed to be.

We’re so ingrained to believe that success is defined by money, power, fancy titles, fancy houses, irreplaceable importance in an organization, etc, etc. However, those are just the most in your face types of success out there. Maybe that is how you define success. Maybe that’s what you aspire to achieve for yourself. That’s fine; I used to. Now I think of things differently, though. And I realized that my new viewpoint comes from re-defining success for myself.

When I was just starting my career out of college, I took a consulting job where I was flying back and forth to Miami every week. I worked fairly long days, pretty standard for consulting, nothing crazy. I lived in a hotel out of a suitcase that was perfectly packed every week. About one year into this, I was so incredibly miserable. That was simply not the life I wanted to live. There were more important things to me than whether the client was happy and the software was ready for “Go Live.” I wanted to cook meals with my boyfriend after work. Hell, I wanted to see my boyfriend after work. I wanted to not feel like I had to check my email over the weekend in case something went wrong or someone might need me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with pursuing a career in consulting. I’m simply pointing out that for me, it was not what would make me happy in life.

Shortly thereafter, I quit my job to pursue something more in line with my personal goals. I redefined success. Instead of thinking corner office at a Fortune 500 I went for 2 person indie software startup instead. I love my job now. Wherever it takes me, at least now I know what it feels like to be real with myself. Through this path over the last two and a half years, I have found a lot of success. For me, success means balancing a love of life, with a love for the work I do. It means always learning, always pushing myself, always tackling challenges, solving hard problems, all while trying to contribute useful products to people around the world. That’s my new definition of success. What’s been the most interesting part of this journey so far, is that my life is actually more satisfying now than at the fancier job. Things are not always what they seem I suppose.

So, moral of the story. Define your own success. Figure out how your life fits into it. Then pursue whatever track helps you achieve that success. Even if it means abandoning the track you’re on.

I recently read in the book, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins,  about the CEO/founder of HP, Mr. Packard. He was a wealthy and very successful man. But he went into work everyday because he had a passion for what he did. He lived in the same modest farm house after making his millions. His idea of a good time was “getting friends together to string some barbed wire ” on the farm. He wore flannel shirts and drove a regular car. When he passed away, his rather large estate was donated to charity. Mr. Packard defined success quite a bit differently than one might expect. All I can say is, that rocks.

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