It’s weird advice, I know. This comes from a person who has (mostly) been working for 35 years straight. There were several moments in my career when I optimized for happiness, and I regret almost all of those decisions. Ill explain my logic.

Financial Independence

The reality is that life is very expensive. Housing, health care, groceries, education, entertainment, everything has gotten more expensive even after adjusting for inflation. Working class people are barely scraping by while billionaires take more and more of the pie.

You might think you can work forever. That you will work until you die. But the reality is that you will find it hard to get hired after you get to a certain age. For me, 2018 was a big wake up call.

We are living longer and longer. See stats below. (Wow Covid sucked)

In your 40’s and 50’s individual contributor jobs that you held will be harder and harder to get. It means that you don’t decide when you retire. The market decides for you. The key question is: Do you have enough money to live out the next 40-50+ years of your life without income?

Financial independence is absolutely everything. I did not save money when I was in my twenties and thirties. I did not invest in an index fund. My children have learned from my failures and are saving every penny for retirement.

Without money, life is extremely stressful.

Happiness is Fleeting

Happiness comes and goes. You might take a job with a boss you love and then 3 weeks in, they tell you they are quitting! (Happened to me twice!) Things change, life throws curveballs at you.

Imagine your future self, your 60-70 year old self who may have yet another 30 years to live. You probably are not working in this future world. You will be lucky if society and civilization is still functioning. Now think about how you will think about your current self.

Will you say, “I am worried about paying for my medication, but thankfully I took that job that made me happy 40 years ago.”? No, you will curse your younger self and say “Why didn’t you focus on money?”

Your happiness today is fleeting. It will not last forever. Money on the other hand will always work, unless society collapses of course.

Best of all worlds

The obvious target is to have your cake and eat it too. You want to be happy and make a lot of money. You want to spend time with family, and be there for your kids and loved ones. You want to have work-life balance and also move up in the world. We want it all.

The way to achieve this is to focus on being strategic in your work. It’s not about working extra hours. If you kill your self with too much to do, you will not get a promotion. It is common wisdom that you don’t promote the work horses because if you do, then who will do all the work?!

You have to be a leader even as an individual contributor. You have to help your peers and even your supervisor succeed. You have to think like an owner and help the whole company succeed. Mentor junior people. Always have a positive attitude.

If you do all of these things, you will eventually be given a chance to manage. When you have a team, keep being a leader. Help your team succeed. Never take credit, always give credit.

Management is the way to make more money. Sometimes, you will not have an opportunity to manage and you may need to switch companies to get that opportunity. Don’t switch too often or people will think you are going to bail on them quickly. It’s a balance and sometimes you may choose the wrong option.

The key and point of this post is that don’t focus on short term happiness in these decisions. Focus on financial opportunity and growth. Focus career decisions on your career and not on your feelings.

And if you do it right, you will not have to work 24/7 and you can have a life and family too. Maybe this is pie in the sky and your decisions are more complicated than mine. If you think I’m full of crap, that’s ok. I still have a long life to live and many lessons still to learn.