What Living in a Casino Taught Me About Managing Career Risks
Not all risks are bad ones, as long as taken on purpose.
In 2015, in the midst of a set of very fortunate adventures, I found myself living in the Motor City Casino in Detroit, MI. At the time, I was funemployed and applying to graduate school, so I started gambling. I walked onto the casino floor with $100 and decided that if I lost it all right then and there, I would stop gambling and find another hobby.
Well, many months later I found myself playing blackjack full-time, I was on a first-name basis with the pit bosses, and I was making money while I was at it. You may ask, if the odds are always in the house’s favor, how can you make money gambling full-time? I wondered that myself and decided to ponder the conundrum in between free shrimp cocktails and Diet Coke. I started to realize many of the same tenets that applied to long-term gambling also applied to investing, and ultimately to work and my professional career.
You never hear people talk about wanting to gamble with their careers, but you often hear people investing in themselves and their careers. The fundamental difference…
