When I was a kid, I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. Then, at some point, I wanted to be a broadcaster. Two completely different careers, but both sounded awesome to me for different reasons. The problem was that somewhere along the way, I realized both of those paths were going to take way more patience than I had. I didn't want to spend a decade in school becoming a surgeon, and I definitely didn't want to move to some tiny market covering Friday night high school football games at 11:00 p.m. waiting for someone to eventually give me a shot on television.
So, like a lot of people, I pivoted. I found sales.
At the time, I didn't think much about why I made that decision. I just knew I wanted to get moving. I wanted a career where effort could turn into something faster. I could pick up the phone, make a call, close a deal, make some money, get promoted, take on more responsibility, and see the results of my work much more quickly. Sales gave me that. Looking back now, it also taught me something pretty important about myself: I am not a patient person.
That can be a really good thing. Impatience has pushed me throughout my career. I don't like waiting around for someone else to create momentum for me. I want to solve things. I want to move. I want to build. I want to see progress. If something is broken, I want it fixed today. If there is an opportunity, I want to go after it now. That mindset has probably helped me accomplish a lot of things faster than I otherwise would have.
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It can also be a problem. There are moments in your career where there is absolutely nothing you can do to speed things up. Promotions take time. Relationships take time. Reputation takes time. Learning a new business takes time. Building trust with a team takes time. Sometimes your career needs to marinate a little bit, and if you are constantly trying to force the next thing to happen, you can create problems that didn't need to exist in the first place.
That is one of the more interesting things about getting older in your career. You start to understand your own operating system. You begin to recognize the patterns that have been there the entire time. Maybe you avoid conflict. Maybe you need constant validation. Maybe you get bored easily. Maybe you love stability. Maybe you need chaos. Maybe you are incredibly competitive. Maybe you struggle to work for people you don't respect. None of these things are necessarily good or bad on their own. They are simply information.
At some point, you have to stop fighting your personality and start designing around it.
The mistake is learning these things about yourself and then continuing to build a career that completely ignores them. If you know you hate bureaucracy, stop acting surprised every time you are miserable inside a massive organization. If you know you need autonomy, stop taking jobs where every decision requires six approvals. If you know you thrive under pressure, maybe a slow-moving environment is never going to bring the best out of you. At some point, you have to stop fighting your personality and start designing around it.
That doesn't mean you get to use your personality as an excuse. I can't simply say, "I'm impatient," and therefore everyone around me needs to move at my speed. Part of growth is learning where your natural tendencies help you and where they hurt you. My impatience can create urgency, but I also have to remind myself that not everything worth building happens quickly. The goal isn't to eliminate who you are. The goal is to understand yourself well enough to know when to lean into it and when to manage it.
Your career gets a lot easier when you stop following someone else's rules and start understanding your own. There is no perfect career path. There is only the path that fits the life you want, the way you work, the things that motivate you, and the things you are willing to tolerate. The earlier you figure those things out, the fewer years you spend trying to force yourself into careers, companies, and environments that were never built for you in the first place.
So the question isn't just what do you want to be when you grow up. The better question is: what have you learned about yourself since you started working? What gives you energy? What drains you? What are you willing to wait for? What are you absolutely unwilling to tolerate anymore? Your career is ultimately one giant experiment in learning who you are. Once you understand the results, you can finally start applying the right rules to the rest of the game.