Dear Self; we need to talk about ambition

> You’ve always hated people being wrong, and it turns out a lot of things can be defined as “wrong” if you have the right temperament.

> The spite-based path to impact and altruism is not the easiest road. Spite is a less fun emotion than hope, and makes fewer friends. But I also can’t bring myself to wish I didn’t have this drive, because it is my actual value system.

This really resonates with me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just a crotchety shit though. Which is probably a good few years after my coworkers came to the same conclusion. I have become either enlightened or jaded enough to not really care much about it at this point though, it’s apparently how I want to live (or need to survive) in the corporate machine. Know thyself, and whatnot.

I love the bit about chasing all paths until you no longer enjoy any of it. That’s classic burnout. Also, while reading it struck me that you called out the fact that you were setting goals to impress other people because that’s what you were trained to do, since childhood. Make parents/teachers/boss happy by meeting the goals. When tasked with coming up with your own, you thought “what would they like?”.

I would highly, highly, recommend anyone interested in video games to play The Beginners Guide as it tackles this very issue. Your motives. “Letting other people set your success criteria” isn’t the answer. The real answer is “what does success look like to you?”

I agree with the writer on current discussions on ambition and early career advice: they’re bland, abstract, and mostly focused on the “self”. It lacks a bigger picture of how a person should interact with their community.

A more practical early career advice that generalises consists of only two steps.

(1) Find a community you enjoy spending time in. (2) Create value for people in that community.

Feeling useful and creating value for other people is what can drive you to push yourself, grow, and have pride in your work.

I was super ambitious early in my career then lost all belief in the mission of any company.

I’ve since spent decades seeking startup success with only mildly good results sometimes, never anything that could be said to be a big win.

I feel like I have no ambition at all and yet I continue to work incredibly hard.

I discover what to do / ambition throughout pains made by others.

Learn from pains is the right way for me to find out what's next.