3 things I learned working at Goldman Sachs.

Plenty more where this came from.

From one millennial to another.

1. How to prioritize risk

Your early twenties is a great time to expose yourself to the “new”. It’s the right time to take risk so you can learn how to manage it.

Dr. Meg Jay shares more her book.

In summary, your prefrontal cortex is developing during these years. This is the part of the brain “calibrating risk-reward”, says the MIT Work Life Center. Think of it like this — you just cleaned out your closet and found a new gadget that can enhance your financial, physical and emotional well-being. You’ll need to toy around with it to understand how it works, right?

I call risk management a life skill. To learn this now is to have an edge during your later years, in business and at home.

So, what are two of the best places to learn about risk when you leave college?

The military, and Wall Street.

You’ll find yourself under pressure to understand a new meaning of consequence in each occupation. One prioritizes the risks of losing lives, while the other prioritizes the risk of losing money.

“Was that trade quoted incorrectly? How many months have we had it on our books? Call the client. Get out of the trade. This could be a $2,000,000 loss.” (Hint: We lost money.)

2. Incentives matter

These matter professionally, as well as in your personal life. You will make decisions in harmony with how your incentives are aligned.

You may be a great person, but in business great people often find themselves in positions where incentives don’t encourage them to act as they were made, or raised. (That means they do bad things.) It’s not their fault. They’re human, like you.

What does it look like if you have the wrong incentives in your personal life?

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you value money over everything else. So, if you’re a person who acts in line with your values (note, not “morals”), then you’ll make decisions to forgo other, more life-giving things.

Wait, who says valuing money a bad thing?

Pay attention. I didn’t say valuing money is bad. I said valuing money over everything else is bad.

How many frustrating mornings, anxious evenings, stomach aches, doctor visits, unnecessarily expensive getaways, or lifeless nights “filling voids” at bars, clubs or strip joints will you endure before you see this?

(Guilty, kind of.)

The point is you need to look at the incentives in your life. They will precede your decisions, professionally and personally.

Sure, maybe you disagree. I’ll leave you with Harvard’s Grant Study on happiness. (You people love Harvard.) This project took 75 years. The data revealed, among other things, financial success depends on warmth of relationships. And alcoholism is a “great destructive power”. To me, alcoholism nothing more than a dysfunctional (only partially genetic) result of the need to “fill voids”.

3. It’s not personal

Don’t take it personally, boo. In the workplace there’s always that dude who’s upset with you because you failed to generate your inner psychic powers to read their mind.

What should you do in these situations?

Take a lap.

Then, ask yourself, “Should I have known what to do?”

If the answer is yes, then check your dashboard to make sure you’re not low on fuel (i.e., food, sleep, exercise, quiet time). After that, carry on.

If the answer is no, then there’s reason to be a nervous nellie. But get a grip and handle yourself because there are people who feast on your discouragement. You need to starve them.

And, by the way, there’s no need to walk that fast in an office. Like, ever.

Did I mention there’s more where that came from?