It has become very fashionable in these strange covid days to quit your job. There are all kinds of theories as to why that is the case, but the prevailing one is that a lot of people are simply looking for something new. In many cases, they are bored in their current jobs.
I get it. Over twenty years ago, I made the decision to leave corporate America, and I have never regretted it. Leaving full-time employment was far from just about money; in fact, when I quit, I was barely making any money at all in the little business I had started.
Money withstanding, quitting my job completely changed the lifestyle of our family for the better. That is not to say that those twenty years have always been easy, but I have had a very good and rewarding life both professionally and non-professionally.
It has also been a life that few would categorize as boring. I ran at least one business during all of those twenty years, and it has been a roller coaster with big successes and big failures. And, for the majority of that time, I was also a professional musician, churning out ten albums, a ton of instructional video content, two for-TV concerts, and a lot of other similar work.
Yes, it is hard to get bored when you have your own money at risk in a business that is bouncing between bankruptcy and success. And in my case at least, there was certainly nothing boring about the professional music career either. I was bankrolling elaborate and expensive albums/projects sometimes costing over $100K that could either flop or succeed (in my case, a bit of both). There is undeniably a big rush that comes from the public nature of music (such as concerts) as well.
No, my life has not been boring. And yet, I have often felt bored and restless. I want to talk about that in this post–where that boredom comes from and why it is dangerous.
Here is a principle that I have learned over twenty years. If you can apply this to your life, it may save you a lot of pain:
Excitement and success very rarely coexist. If you are chasing excitement, you likely will not see success, and if you are successful, plan on being bored.
It is rare for moderns to admit what I just said. You will get hints at it from past psychologists and philosophers (such as Ecclesiastes and Arendt). But in general, the modern professional is chasing both excitement and success even though the possibility of having both is almost non-existent.
Here is an example: I interact regularly with business peers, and a question recently came up that I have heard in different forms many times before:
In the early days of my business, it was like the Wild West, full of excitement and fun. How can I keep that culture in my business today?
There was a time in my life when I would have answered that question with a string of business babble and buzz words about company culture and such. These days, here is my answer:
You can’t… unless you want to put your success at risk.
The truth is that the business was more fun in the early days because it almost certainly was not yet successful. But over time, that changed, and as it turns out, success is boring.
In fact, you will find that when you are seeing the greatest success, you will feel like you are hardly doing anything at all. Furthermore, it is hard to replicate the rush you remember from more exciting times now that your success has mitigated the risk that you used to face.
Yes, it is the painful struggle that brings excitement. You will never feel more excited than when a lot is at risk and the ending is in doubt. Excitement comes from tension, and tension can only come from risk and uncertainty.
Let me put it another way: excitement and success are incompatible because excitement needs risk while success essentially is the elimination of risk.
This is a truth that we all instinctively understand. For example, the University of Alabama has an ultra-successful football program, but I have little interest in watching many of its games. Its games are boring blowouts, and the risk of losing is nonexistent almost all of the time. That is why Nick Saban is always whining because students leave in the 3rd quarter.
Now, once you understand this uneasy relationship between success and excitement, you have to learn to live with it. That is harder than it sounds, but managing that relationship will help you avoid traps and bad decision-making. For example, here is something else I can now see about myself:
My worst business decisions have always occurred when I thought I was chasing success but was really chasing excitement.
I will give you one example from my past. We launched a skincare product about fifteen years ago and things went just fine at first as we stuck with our bread and butter: ecommerce. However one day, an infomercial company called, and before I knew it, we were heavily invested in making a 30-minute infomercial. It was expensive, but it was also exciting. I flew to Miami a few times during production and enjoyed hobnobbing with the production crew and actors.
The story is long, but I will cut to the punchline. Within a year, we had lost a ton of money on production costs, inventory, TV spots, radio ads, and a lawsuit with a competing company. All because I made a series of bad decisions that took us out of an area in which we were good into something that was more exciting.
The truth is that it took me a long, long time to learn this lesson, and I could give example after example of my stupid decisions. But, here is something I eventually learned about success:
If you want to see success, learn to do one thing so well that it bores you.
Now, to apply this to real-life (not just business), here is the big problem: we are not wired in such a way that we can be happy while bored. As I have written before, if we do not have enough tension/excitement in our life, we have a tendency to manufacture some, even when doing so is destructive.
If you stop and think about it, I would bet you can identify ways you have made decisions for excitement even when you knew there was the potential for enormous damage.
I will give you a simple example from my own personal life. If I am in a boring conversation, I have a tendency to say something to start an argument. I know that it will likely not end well, but I engage in that destructive behavior anyway. I subconsciously choose dangerous excitement over safe boredom.
Or, consider these examples of destructive excitement:
In a boring marriage and looking for excitement elsewhere? I do not have to tell you how destructive that can be to your personal life.
Enjoy the excitement that comes from making big purchases? The $8,000 refrigerator may scratch that itch for a few weeks but also deplete your savings or drive up a credit card balance.
Tired of modest stock market returns? Speculating in cryptocurrency is exciting, but it is likely to destroy your retirement accounts.
Bored with your existing business and want to expand into something new and flashy? Don’t bet that this kind of diversification will work for you as well as staying in your lane and focused on what you already do well.
You may think I am implying that excitement must always be sacrificed for the sake of success. I am actually not implying that at all. We need both success and excitement in our lives. However, here is what I am saying:
Generally speaking, a good life is the result of good decisions.
When you are making big decisions, ask yourself if you are making them for the sake of excitement or success.
And then ask yourself if you are willing to live with the results.
Maybe leave your business and marriage alone and take up hang gliding for excitement. A quiet personal and professional life is highly underrated.