Optimise for learning

When looking for their first job, most students don’t consider the impact of that choice on the mileage of their career. Due to lack of exposure and perspective, they get boxed into evaluating jobs based on the misguided metrics like CTC which are usually fluffed up by savvy HR professionals.

As a student, consider that you will earn your entire first year’s salary in just one month by the time you’re 35. If you’re on a high growth path, you’ll earn the same in just a week. Compared to how you grow and what position you’ll be in a decade where you start is insignificant. But, how you start your career has a huge impact.

When you’re in college, you are learning all the time. Learning anything is not easy. It takes a lot of mental effort. If you don’t apply whatever you’re learning, after a while you’ll ask yourself what the purpose of all that mental effort is and you won’t have a good answer. Then naturally, you’ll lose your hunger to learn. That is very dangerous. That is why it is important to apply your learning when you’re in academia. In fact, most students realise that within in a couple of years of graduation, they forget all the course work they did in college. What remains with them is the assignments / projects they worked on.

On the flipside, a job that focuses mainly on doing is equally bad. Big companies have HR policies that try to maximize your output over a 3 year period because their statistics tell them that the average employee will stay at their company for 3-4 years. Being a profit driven organisation, they maximise your output over that 3 year period. This might mean less learning and more doing. But, you are optimising for a 30 year career. Maximising output over a 3 year period in the beginning of your career leads to a shortened career trajectory. If you are ambitious and want to have a full fledged career where your potential is completely unleashed, you have to optimise for learning through out. The best companies have a longer vision and emphasise on optmising learning for their employees through out. But those companies are rare.

If you manage to find the right balance between learning and doing, you can get onto a positive spiral. The work that you do challenges you to keep learning. The things that you learn empower you to do better and better work. This positive cycle in time enables you to discover your passion. It will take you to a place where you’ll enjoy work for work’s own sake and not just for salary or to impress your manager. Ironically, if you reach that place, all those perks like the big salaries and big roles automatically come to you.

Passion is the rocket fuel that will enable your career to take off. Till you find that passion, you have to keep pushing yourself with motivation and discipline. Once you do find it, you will not be worried about staying motivated or pushing yourself. You will be worried about taking enough breaks so that you don’t burn out.

So, optimise for doing when you’re college and optimise for learning when you’re in a job.