Uncertainty

So one of the toughest concepts for me to be able to accept and acknowledge since I’ve started working as an “independent business developer” so to speak (hate the word entrepreneur), is the fact that you just never know when you venture will come to an end, and you will be left empty-handed. So why is this?

Well, for starters, as human beings we are not huge fans of uncertainty, right? Which is a statement that does not, definitely, hold for everyone since people have all sorts of different relations towards risk. Yet, for the average guy, to not be able to know if he will have a job (and hence an earning) next month is a pretty scary thought. And I have to admit: up until about a year ago, I was that average guy.

So to me at least, the first huge breakthrough moment while starting to work independently came when I decided that I was willing to accept and acknowledge this uncertainty surrounding starting a business. And the breakthrough happened when (1) I managed to understand that the risk-reward tradeoff made sense, because even though the risk is very high, the amount of excitement and motivation I get doing this kind of work totally makes it worthwhile (and the expected value of the potential economic rewards too, at least in South America) and; (2) when I also understood that the actual risk of any given “regular job” coming to an end is actually higher than the risk we perceive. Maybe it’s a mechanism to be able to live our lives a bit happier, but we just decide to ignore the fact that any job can really end any given day, for infinite different reasons. Even more so if you add to that “risk function” the probability of becoming frustrated and depressed as a consequence of doing something you don’t really like.

To be honest, having that breakthrough moment was liberating. Because with that worry out of the way I’ve been able to start enjoying a lot more what I do. And because whether we want to face it or not, in the end every job has uncertainty around it, so why not just do whatever potentially offers the highest reward, and is also definitely the more fun thing to do?