HealthyGamerGG - You Are Spoiled.

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about how to be more resilient when it comes to your career, creating value, and if you need to switch careers or not. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now is the chance to use reliable energy to grow your money with the Dominion Energy Reliability Investment. Our new investment product offers competitive returns, no maintenance fees, and flexible online access to your money. Make the reliable investment in reliable energy, the Dominion Energy Reliability Investment. To find out more, go online to ReliabilityInvestment.com. That's reliabilityinvestment.com. So it's interesting. I mean, I think that like we think a lot, we don't realize where our notions of what a career should look like come from. We don't realize where they come from. A lot of it's romanticized. A lot of it's mythologized. A lot of times we think like in binary circumstances. And the other thing is we don't think about why this is an important question for us now. Are there particular things in my life that are making this an important question? Can I optimize those things? Will that make me more content? Why am I not resilient? Am I spoiled?

Hello, HG community. I am 25 this year, M. I'm currently working at my third company since graduating with an engineering degree in 2020. The first company I worked at, I wasn't really interested in it, but the people there were very nice and it wasn't stressful. I never thought of leaving so soon about three months until one day I got an offer for my second company. It sounded like what I really wanted to do and they could accept me despite not having

much experience with it, so I went with it. However, after a few months, I realized the company was not what I expected, and I felt really frustrated working there, so I left. My parents weren't supportive of me leaving my second job because they don't want me to have a bad record of job hopping. Now I'm at my third company in facing difficulties because there's a lot to learn. My mentor, that's not really nice, helpful, and that's not what I'm interested in. I feel a lot of pressure and anxiety because I don't know a lot of what I should do, and it's hard for me to learn and catch up. And I feel like I don't have the right mentality that the company would want. I'm just in this job because it's a typical sustainable job.

What I'm really interested in is the fitness industry. I like working out in nutrition a lot. Every day, that is mostly what's on my mind, which is why I recently started trying out part-time to see if I can fully venture into this field someday. However, being a fitness trainer isn't the most stable job, or so it seems. Even I myself am figuring out whether it is a feasible thing to do. I actually do still like engineering, but engineering is a wide field and I just am not in the field I wanted. In my high school years, I loved physics and would be inquisitive about everything.

It's sad how that passion died out after growing up in learning the more technical boring stuff. Or maybe I'm just interested on the surface level. Should I stay at my current job? Can I succeed in this field without having interest? Is this a learning curve everyone faces? I told myself to stay for at least a few years because I'm tired of switching jobs, and frankly, this industry. But I don't want to mess up in my current job because of my incompetency.

I wonder if I'm just spoiled and not willing to face hardships. Please ask me, please advise me on what I should do or work on. I may not have described my situation in detail, so feel free to ask for clarification. thanks for reading. So let's look a little bit further. Additional context that might matter. The duration of my first, second, and current job are three months, seven months, and seven months to present. When I was young, my mom asked me if I wanted to learn the piano. I said I would give it a try. After some time, I didn't like it, but my mom insisted me to continue to not waste it. Eventually, I would quit after the third grade. I studied Japanese language with a private tutor after a year, so I began to lose interest.

studied until the N3 level. I tried going after a girl that I had a crush on for about three months. After that, I lost interest and stopped pursuing because I felt it felt one-sided, although she said she's willing to give me a chance. I know dating is a whole other topic, but yeah, just providing more info, ha-ha. Okay? So very similar, right? In your 20s, trying to figure out. I have engineering jobs. I don't really like what I do. Not sure I should quit. I'm passionate about the fitness industry. Started doing it on the side.

Right? So we're seeing some patterns. So what's the first thing that we're going to look at? We're going to look at some of these temporal factors, temporary factors. So once again, when we're struggling to make career decisions, right, we don't know. It's like, okay, I'm in this field. It pays pretty well. People are advising me to stay in it.

It's safe. But it's not my passion. I don't really enjoy it that much. But the problem is that my passion. is like less stable. I don't know how to make a career out of it. I don't know what kind of money I can make. Really common situation, right? We're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Which one should I do? So the first thing that we're going to look at once again is the temporary factors. Because what begs this question? Why are we asking this question now? Where is this question coming from?

So oftentimes when people come to me, right? They'll say like, oh, you know, I need to see a psychiatrist. And then I'll ask them, what's changed recently? Why now? And oftentimes we don't appreciate the temporary factors that push us to make these like drastic life changes. And so let's take a look at those. Okay. So facing difficulties is because there's a lot to learn. My mentor, that's not really nice, helpful, and that's not what I'm interested in. I feel a lot of pressure and anxiety.

It's hard for me to learn and catch up. I don't have the right mentality that the company would want. Right? So there are a lot of things that are internal here. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but the person is asking, am I resilient? Am I not resilient? Am I spoiled? And the answer to that question may be sort of.

So I don't think that this person is spoiled, but I think that they may have a dimension to grow. Okay? So this is where we're going to kind of take a step back. And let's think a little bit about, like, what do we perceive? as what a career is like or what a job is like. Like, where do we get these ideas of, like, what work should be like? Like, where do we get our ideas of, like, what should I expect from a job? Like, am I spoiled?

Do I, should I stick with it? You know? So it's like all kinds of different information that's very poor in quality. So the first thing is that we've got, unfortunately, a lot of people from the generation above us, telling us that we're spoiled and that we have it easy. And back in my day, dot, dot, dot, dot, yada, yada. Right? So we get this idea, like, am I spoiled?

Like, do I have it really good? Like, and it's not just coming from them. It also comes from us. It comes from media. It comes from social media. So we have this growing trend in our society to gatekeep suffering and unhappiness based on privilege. Right?

So what we started to say increasingly so is that there's two camps of people. There's the privileged and the non-privileged. And if you're privileged and you complain about something, you're spoiled, you're a wuss, you're not a good person, you don't realize how good you have it. And if you're in the underprivileged class, then all of your suffering is acceptable, legitimate, et cetera. So I tend to fall on Buddha with this on his side, which Buddha. said that suffering is like a general aspect of the human condition. And I think even neuroscientifically,

you know, there's all kinds of data that we know that, for example, people who do have a certain amount of income are statistically more likely to be happy. You have more security. You have less cortisol. You have to worry less. So there are actually like good correlations with like happiness, contentment, security, and income. So privilege does absolutely matter. But it's not the, it's not binary. Right? That people with privilege, still do struggle. And we see that, right? Because this person seems like they've got a stable job. It's like, what are you complaining about? And so that aspect of judgment causes us to feel like we're spoiled, right? Because I have it so good. What am I complaining about? And so then once again,

like if you're thinking about making a career change, because there are aspects of your job that are hard. It's hard for me to catch up. It's hard for me to learn. I don't really like what I do. My mentor doesn't seem that interested in teaching me. So those all feel like temporary things to me. So those could change depending on the company, depending on the field, depending on the, you know, the situation. So I'd be careful about making a drastic career change based on what I kind of call temporary factors. I mean, they may persist. And the whole point is if they persist, then you're more likely to make a career shift. Or it's more important to make a career shift. So be a little bit careful about those things. Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is like, where is our

perception coming from about what a career should look like. Is a career supposed to be hard or easy? Are we supposed to be interested in it or not interested in it? What makes us excel? And this is where, once again, media and society mythologize and romanticize the concept of a career. So they think that there's like, there's this mythical thing. There's a unicorn out there, which is like something that you do that pays really well, and that you wake up every day, being energized and passionate and can't get enough of. Right? You work, it's like this hustle culture where like you're grinding, right?

Like, mm-hmm. And it's, I do it because I love it. My passion is so great that it drowns everything else out. You should see those people's personal relationships, by the way, are an absolute mess. You look at these people who are like in investment banking, you've been divorced three times, or third marriage, been divorced twice, 55 years old, more money than they know what to do with.

So there's always a price. That myth, I wouldn't really chase that myth. The reason is because, once again, we have, like, most people out there are kind of like doing something in the middle, right? They don't have something that they're incredibly passionate about. And even I can say this. I mean, I think I'm generally on the, you know, the luckiest 1% here because I really enjoy what I do. And I don't think you guys see this, but, like, I don't enjoy what I do.

do most days. Like most of my day is taken up with stuff that I find absolutely exhausting and unenjoyable. What I love doing is talking to people. Right? But now it's like, it's like meetings and like got to run this and got to do that and like take this meeting and all this kind of stuff. There's a lot of stuff that even I do that I don't like.

I'm not saying that I'm unlucky. I think I'm definitely on the luckier side because all that stuff is in service to something that I really care about. So I'm really lucky that way. But we get this idea. that work is something that we're supposed to be enjoying day in and day out. Am I? No, I didn't say I was unhappy.

I said I don't enjoy, I'm very happy. I just don't enjoy most of how I spend my days. Right? And so someone else is saying work is literal slavery and it's like, sort of. So this is where, in my opinion, work is about value. That's what I think is the best reason to work, is to create value. Let's think about it on a very simple level. I'm sure there are economists or political philosophers who know way better than I do will pick apart what I'm saying.

This is just how I've understood it, okay, as an ignorant person, layman. So generally speaking, let's look at farmers. Like, so if I'm a farmer and I grow food and there's a blacksmith who makes tools, if both of us are doing both things, we'd do less, we'd be less successful. Or we'd take more time and our quality would be lower than if we'd, like specialize and each do one thing. So the blacksmith provides value to a group of farmers. The farmers provide value to a group of blacksmiths, right? That's kind of like fundamentally what work is about. In my opinion, it's about generating value. It's about trying to make the world like a better

place. And that doesn't mean charity. It means like trying to like, you know, enrich the lives of people around me. And the whole idea is that if we all kind of do this, then if there's a farmer, if there's a, if we have two farmers versus one farmer and one blacksmith, the blacksmith increases the yield of each individual farmer by giving them high quality tools. And then the net result is that like we have more efficiency than we ever did before. Right? Because like five farmers with good tools will outproduce six farmers. So efficiently like one blacksmith plus five farmers outproduces six farmers. And if you guys play video games, like, you'll see that this is like video game analogies, right? We know this. That like, if I'm playing Starcraft, I can build seven zealots,

or I can build six zealots and one upgrade. And the six zealots with one upgrade, well, actually, they may lose to the seven zealots, but at some point there's some kind of economy of scale, right? So 20 zealots with one upgrade is going to outperform 21 zealots with zero upgrades. So that's the same thing. So work is about creating value. It doesn't necessarily have to be easy or fun, it's really about generating value. That's why we do things. And what we also tend to find is that compensation is dependent on how much value you generate versus how hard it is what you do, all kinds of different things there. I'm not going to get into that because I don't understand that stuff very well. But the first thing that I'd kind of disabuse you of is the idea that like you're

supposed to enjoy what you do day in and day out. Because the truth of the matter is that like if the goal is value, like that's not the same as enjoyment. And somewhere along the way, what happened is like we started generating so much value that recreation became a part of it. Some people really enjoy what they do. I think you should absolutely gravitate towards enjoying what you do. But in terms of being spoiled, like you're not supposed to enjoy every minute of it or there may be rough patches. Right. So I really like detested parts of medical school. I detested parts of residency. I really did not enjoy those. There are parts of my day today that I don't like. And so I'm not going to say just suck it up because I don't think that's

helpful, it's to acknowledge that not everything that you do is going to be fun. And if you're asking the question, are you spoiled? I don't think you're spoiled, but I think it's important to acknowledge that there are going to be parts of what you do that you don't enjoy. And that's okay. Right? Because like that's not what we, that's not like how we mythologize work. Because even like if you look at like a movie, like I remember watching The Firm, which is a

book by John Grisham that got turned into a movie. In these lawyer movies, right, like they show like these montages of like attorneys like flipping through books. And in like 60 seconds, they're like, oh, look at how hard they're working. Do you all realize like how much that sucks in real life? But we romanticize that, right? If you look at a lawyer movie, what you're going to see is like powerful scenes in the courtroom. That's going to be like half in the movie. And five minutes is going to be like people flipping through books.

If you're an actual attorney, 99% of it is flipping through books. 99% of it is flipping through books. 1% is in the courtroom. So we get these like perceptions that this is how it's supposed to be. If you watch Gray's Anatomy, it's like, oh my God, this person has a ticking time bomb inside them. I can't move my hand, otherwise the bomb will explode. And what you'll see is in some scenes, they'll have books on the bookshelf. Whereas most of medical school in medicine, I mean, not medical school for sure, is like the

books, it's not ticking time bombs. Most of the crappy part of medicine is typing. I kid you not. The reason I became a psychiatrist instead of oncologist, number one reason, actually maybe not number one, what a huge one, was I realized. So I had advice from, I had really good advice from a mentor who was like, you should do one month of psychiatry and one month of medicine. And at the end of every day, write down what you like and what you don't like.

Of that day, forget about the field, forget about the big picture. On a day-to-day basis, what do you like and what do you dislike? And that's what I realized. Brilliant idea. When I was doing physical medicine, I literally spent 10 hours a day in front of a computer. You round once in the morning. You check up on all your patients.

If you all have been in the hospital, you'll know this. Doctors show up, they'll listen to your heart and lungs. They hang around for 10 minutes, and then they leave. Then they show up at 5 p.m. See you for another 10 minutes. Then they leave. Right? 10 minutes if you're lucky, sometimes it's 5.

What are you doing the rest of the day? They're sitting on their asses. They're writing notes, sending orders, monitoring vinyl signs. In front of a computer. You used to have to walk around and see charts. Now everything's on the computer. I spent 10 hours a day in front of a computer. In psychiatry, the least amount of time in front of the computer.

I got to sit with human beings. That's what I was like, oh, I got into medicine to help people, not click buttons. Like, clicking buttons and optimizing stuff is what I do in video games. I don't want to spend my time doing that. But some people really enjoy that, right? which is totally fine. So are you spoiled? I don't think you're spoiled,

but I think it's important to recognize your cognitive biases about what to expect. And that if you're generating value and that's really what work is about, right? Like if we think about what we compensate people for,

I'd like to think, depending on, you know, what your political and economic philosophies are and what you read and how knowledgeable you are, you may disagree with that, which is fine.

I'm not saying I'm right here. But I'd like to think that generally speaking, it's about generating value. And generating value isn't necessarily aligned with like enjoying yourself. So if you're struggling to figure out what to do and you're like, should I tolerate this more? Is there is the grass greener on the other side? It's been my experience that the most effective way to build a career is not necessarily in macroscopic changes, but in like minor modifications as you go through it.

And those are those temporary factors. So if you're in engineering, you know, and you're like you don't enjoy like you don't have a good, mentorship relationship. Don't quit and go into fitness, like try to find a good mentorship relationship. So try to fix all of the things that are wrong in your job first before you switch careers. Do the level best that you can. Find work that you consider more engaging. Because this person is talking about like some stuff that like, but I don't think they

kind of realize. So it's sad how my passion died out growing up and learning more of the technical boring stuff. This is where the value comes from. right? Like learning about the theory of gravity is super cool. But at some point, like if you want to send a spaceship into the air, there's a lot of just like straight math without the spaceship going into the air. Years and years or even decades of like the boring stuff. That's how you get something into the air. So like the technical boring stuff is like how you bring oftentimes value to the world. Right. Like that's where like I don't like, it's not fun to call a pharmacy. and try to figure out why, like, this prescription is not being given to the patient. Like, my job is to help people. But in order to do that, sometimes they need medication. And so figuring out which medication they need and, like, that's all diagnostically very satisfying and stuff.

Like, I'm helping this human being. That's great. Fulfilling. They feel better. They're getting better. That enriches me. But at the end of the day, the practicalities of prescribing the medication, has a lot of crap. It's studying pharmacology. Right. It's memorizing this gigantic list of pharmacologic

interactions. That before I prescribe a particular medication, I need to remember to ask the patient, do you drink grapefruit juice? Right? I have to remember and memorize all these really minute tasks. I have to set up speed dial with the pharmacy so I can get the patient the medication. There's a lot of it that sucks. And so I'm not saying like you just got to suck it up, but you know, understand that that's a piece of it. And so you should try to optimize that as much as you want to, as much as you can, but recognize that that's a piece of it. And then over time, what you'll find is that there are going to be some jobs where that stuff is too much, right? Like, it's just not worth it for you, which is totally fine. But it takes time to figure that out. You have to give it a shot.

Everyone's getting caught up in grapefruit juice. The last thing that I'd say is that, you know, if you're someone who's in engineering and you love fitness, I don't think that's an either or. And this is where, once again, I think that there's sort of this idea that if you're in engineering, you have to, like, switch into fitness and become a personal trainer. I would move away from that thinking if you can. So be more creative. So instead of assuming that, like, the. only way you can get into fitness and nutrition is to be a personal trainer. Like, recognize that your real value in the world and your real success is not going to be choosing either or. It's

actually combining the two. So if you have a technical expertise and a passion, is there any way you can combine the two? I love video games, but I'm a psychiatrist. Which one should I quit my job as a psychiatrist to become a professional video gamer? Oh, interesting. Like, those are my options, right? It's not like I can start streaming on Twitch and talking to gamers. It's not like I can be a psychiatrist for e-sports teams. It's not like I can develop a program to help other content creators with their mental health. And so I wonder, is there anything in the fitness industry that needs an engineer? Are people in the fitness industry, I don't know, making devices that require engineering expertise, right?

Is there anyone in like, is there a field of engineering that involves nutrition? I don't know, maybe something like biomedical engineering. And this is where you say, but that's not what I'm trained in. I'm a structural engineer. Well, that's where, like, it's pretty cool, but there are a lot of companies out there that what they really need is like a core skill set, not a particular expertise. And so lateral moves are absolutely possible, especially within startups. Because especially at the frontier of things, you may like the core, it's the core technical stuff that you hate, which is like applicable across fields.

Right. And so startups are the ones where like they're doing something new anyway. So like sort of experience matters less. Sometimes it can matter a whole lot. But it's like you're not going to be, you know, like, how? How can I say this? Like, if I'm starting a food truck and I'm making burgers, it's more important for me to have someone who knows how to cook than someone who's been working at a burger place for 10 years.

Does that make sense? And that changes some, right? Like in engineering, like structural engineers may not really, like, if you're talking about precise medical device equipment, like, there may be like a steep learning curve there. So I don't know that you can make, you know, an intra arterial stent. if you're a structural engineer. But I'd guess that a lot of it is like fluid dynamics and core equations and, you know, like clotting stuff. Like you can learn a lot of that stuff.

So I'm not saying it's easy to make that shift. But ideally what you can actually do is not choose either or but combine them. And in fact, that's where your value is going to be the highest. So there are going to be fitness companies out there that are looking about, looking for engineers. Like I can find some guy who's a good engineer who doesn't give a crap about my product. or I can find someone who doesn't have quite the technical expertise that I'm looking for, but absolutely is a strong engineer who has got a good work history and is like comes in and is like clearly a fitness buff and cares about what they do.

And you've got a real shot there. And the interesting thing is that's also, ironically, how you may make the most money. You're going to combine your skill set with your passion and you'll generate the most value. Right? And someone's saying electrical engineers do whatever they want to. You're right. Like, I've seen electrical engineers in all kinds of positions. So it's interesting.

I mean, I think that, like, we think a lot. We don't realize where our notions of what a career should look like come from. We don't realize where they come from. A lot of it's romanticized. A lot of it's mythologized. A lot of times we think, like, in binary circumstances. And the other thing is we don't think about why this is an important question for us now. Are there particular things in my life that are making this an important question?

Can I optimize those things? Will that make me more content? Is there some way to combine these two things? And if the question is, are you spoiled? That sort of depends on what your expectations are and how hard you work. So I think spoiled is more about expectations than it is about like anything else, right? Because it's like you have this idea that it's supposed to be this way. That's what we think about is spoiled.

I'm spoiled because like I wanted pasta and this isn't pasta. I wanted the curly pasta, not the straight pasta. It's about expectations and letting go of expectations. To recognize that whatever you do, there's going to be some work that you don't enjoy. Like, that's probably going to be a part of it. So stop looking for that unicorn because it, let's assume it doesn't exist. Or maybe a better way to put it is, the unicorn is not found, it's crafted. So optimize each part of your life.

If you don't have good mentorship, find good mentorship. If you don't like your current job, but you've moved jobs too recently, you need to stay there for a year. But the next time you switch jobs, you're going to look for some of these things. What does the leadership structure to look like? What does the learning environment look like? And when they ask you during an interview, do you have any questions for us? That's when now that you've been at three different jobs, you're going to know what kinds of questions to ask. Think about how can you ask a question?

What's a question? If you don't like the job that you're in, here's how to prepare for your next interview. You have to ask yourself, what are the questions I should have asked in this interview that would have flagged my current job situation? And that's what you need to ask. The most important part of the job interview. Everyone's like, oh my God, I'm interviewing. How do I do a good interview? Forget about doing good in an interview.

The most important part of a job interview is you figuring out what the job is right for you. It's not about impressing them. And then craft your life one step at a time. Right? If you're a fitness buff, like, see if there are like people at fitness startups that are hiring engineers. And you apply. And this is where like, don't negotiate against yourself. Oh, they're looking for this kind of engineering.

That's not what I have. So I might as well not apply. Just apply anyway. Write a really strong cover letter. Hey, I know y'all are looking for this kind of engineering. Truth is, I'm a really good engineer. I have strong technical skills. I'm not exactly what y'all are looking for, but I really love fitness.

That's why I'm making such a, you know, that's why I'm applying to this job. Because I care about this stuff. A lot. I'd really appreciate an interview, right? And this is where you're going to say things. Like, by the way, one of my strengths is that even when there's a lot to learn, and it's hard for me to like, when there's a lot to learn and I have a lot of catching up to do and I don't have good mentorship, I can do that really well.

That's actually what happened in my current job, is that I'm really good at, like, learning things, even when I'm behind and, like, catching up. in the absence of good teaching. That's something that a startup would love, because that's what a lot of startup work is, because there's no one to teach it to you, because it's new.