EPILOGUE

Write Your Story

Can you remember what it was like to be eight years old? Really remember? Chances are you can’t. I’m sure you can look at eight-year-olds and see the things they’re doing and remember some events of your life. But it’s hard to truly project yourself back into the thoughts and feelings you had at that age.

I was thinking about that not long ago when I stumbled on diaries I kept as a kid (at the insistence of my mother, who said I’d want to see them in the future). I read about scores of kickball games at school, a description of a new mechanical pencil I got, and a visit to the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia (where, apparently, I got a souvenir coin I liked so much that I traced it into my diary). Many of these details were things I had forgotten, and none of them seemed important enough to commemorate in a diary.

You lose the details not just of your childhood but of every stage of your life. A central principle of the cognitive brain is that the greater the overlap between the information in your current environment and the information that was present in the initial experience, the more likely you are to recall that experience. That’s why you can remember so many details of your life that you hadn’t thought about in years if you revisit a childhood home or a place you vacationed many years before. And that’s why the easiest things for you to remember about your past are the ones that are most compatible with how you see the world right now. Your “now” affects your view of the past.

One result of this aspect of memory is that it can be hard to really appreciate the trajectory of your career. You’ll forget about early career anxieties as you move on. You may fail to recognize the magnitude of the contributions you’ve made, because they’ve been part of your life for a while. When you find it hard to remember the details of where you started, it can be difficult to see how far you’ve come.

To help you track your progress, keep a record of your career. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to maintain a regular diary. But even if you aren’t, pick a date each year. It might be your birthday, or New Year’s Day, or some other date with meaning for you. Take a little time to write about your work life that year. Write about the day-to-day tasks you do, the people you work with, your hopes, dreams, and fears. Write about things you’re proud of and also the mistakes you’ve made. Consider saving your calendars from work as well so that you have a record of how you spent your time.

And—every once in a while—take a look back at what your “now” looked like in the past. You’ll see how much your aspirations and worries change over time. Some events that you thought were going to be important will fade. Others that seemed inconsequential at the time may have proved crucial. Some goals you had earlier will remain priorities. You may also recognize that things you thought you’d never do have become a central part of what brings you satisfaction at work.

If you’re lucky enough to stay healthy, your career will soak up more than 75,000 hours of your life. Yet when you ask other people about their careers, you say “What do you do?” and expect them to boil that down to a word (professor, manager, entrepreneur) or a sentence or two. Your story is richer than that—and you’d like to be able to appreciate as much of it as possible.

Bumper-sticker wisdom says that people don’t lie on their deathbeds and say, “I wish I spent more time at the office.” But people do take great pride in the contributions they made, the people whose lives their work touched, and the colleagues whose careers they enriched. They relish their successes and are proud of the obstacles they overcame. Even failures often become good stories when enough time has gone by.

So my advice is to write it down. Savor the details. And remember that the four saddest letters in the English language are TGIF.^* If your work life is just a way to pass the time between weekends, you’re missing out on a great adventure.

*Thank God It’s Friday (which was a saying before it was a restaurant chain).