Quit Often, Create Value, Be Happy

These are my musings based off Prof. Deepak Malhotra’s Speech to HBS graduating class of 2012. Parts of this have been directly taken from his speech, while other parts are purely my interpretation.

Life has given me many opportunities. If I am still not happy with it then it is the biggest tragedy of my life. The tragedy isnt me being sad, but the tragedy is me being unable to achieve my potential, my genius. Everyone has some hidden genius inside them waiting to be discovered.

The right way to build my life is to explore that genius fearlessly. To be really happy, I need to be confident about whatever I am doing. I should be completely convinced that, yes, this is what I want to be doing at this point. However, to be able to reach that point where I am completely convinced that this is what I want to do, I need to quit early and quit often. Every three months, I should ask myself, is this really what I had envisioned myself to be doing? Is this really what makes me kick? Is this what I want? If the answer is No, then I should do myself a favor and quit. It will take time but ultimately I will settle on a place where I feel home. However, quiting isn’t an easy thing to do. I will need to cultivate that strength to quit and to say ‘No’ to things that I dont want to be doing. Not quiting isnt an option. Because by being in the wrong place and wrong job, I am just wasting my time, my energy and my resources.

Without knowing the endless possibilities in the world I cant even begin to chart my career path. The only way to really lead a happy life and a successful career is to experiment and to try out different things.

The next thing the Professor taught me is that I should create value first and then think about monetizing it. I would be a thief if I were to get paid but not create enough value. The value I create is the upper bound on the money I should make. Create value first and then get paid on basis of fairness.

Once, I have figured the correct industry, the correct job that I want to be in, the next most important thing to be happy and successful is my relationships with others. There will always be conflicts in the world. Smart and well intention-ed people can have different point of views. The most important ingredient to build fruitful relationships is to be empathetic. Empathy can help me understand why the other person is behaving as such. This can go a long way in cooperating and building those healthy relationships even with people whom you fundamentally hate.

Other important constituent to build healthy relationships and to be empathetic are being humble and confident. Humbleness and confidence are two very important attributes to succeed in life and neither alone are good enough. A humble but under-confident person wouldn’t be able to achieve much and similarly an a-humble but confident person is bound to go up in flames some day.

And last but not the least, always stay a student. Life throws innumerable opportunities at me everyday to learn. I shouldn’t be a picky learner. There is a silver lining to every cloud and every coin has a flip side. So I just need to pull up my socks and learn as much as I can from where ever I can. I am not a picky learner. I am a student and I learn whatever I can from whomsoever I can.