Why you will fail to have a great career - Larry Smith

I want to discuss with you this afternoon why you're going to fail to have a great career. I'm an economist. I do dismal. At the end of the day, it's ready for dismal remarks. I only want to talk to those of you who are, who want a great career. I know some of you have already decided you want a good career; you're gonna fail too because goodness, you're cheery about failing.

A Canadian group undoubtedly, those trying to have good careers are going to fail because really good jobs are now disappearing. There are great jobs and great careers, and then there are the high workload, high stress, blood sucking, soul-destroying kinds of jobs, and practically nothing in between. So the people looking for good jobs are going to fail. I want to talk about those looking for great jobs, great careers, and why you're going to fail.

The first reason is that no matter how many times people tell you, if you want a great career, you have to pursue your passion. You have to pursue your dreams. You have to pursue that, your greatest fascination in your life. You hear it again and again, and then you decide not to do it. It doesn't matter how many times you download Steven J’s Stanford commencement address, you still look at it and decide not to do it. I'm not quite sure why you decide not to do it; you're too lazy to do it. It's too hard. You're afraid if you look for your passion and don't find it, you'll feel like you're an idiot.

So then you make excuses about why you're not going to look for your passion, and they are excuses. Latest gen, we're going to look for a whole long list. Your creativity in thinking of excuses not to do what you really need to do if you want to have a great career. So, for example, what if your great excuse is, well, great careers are really and truly for most people just a matter of luck?

So I'm gonna stand around, I'm gonna try to be lucky, and if I'm lucky, I'll be having a great career. If not, I'll have a good career, but a good career is an impossibility, so that's not going to work. Then your other excuse is, yes, there are special people who pursue their passions, but they are geniuses; they are Steven J. I'm not a genius. When I was five, I thought I was a genius, but my professors have beaten that idea out of my head long since.

Now I know I am completely competent. Now you see, if this was 1950, being completely competent would have given you a great career. But guess what? This is almost 2012, and saying to the world, I am totally completely confident is damning yourself with the faintest of praise. Then, of course, another excuse is, well, I would do, I would do this, but, well, after all, I'm not weird. Everybody knows that people who pursue their passions are somewhat obsessive, a little strange.

Okay, you know, a fine line between madness and genius. I'm not weird. I've reread Steven J’s biography. Oh my goodness, I'm not that person. I am nice. I am normal. I'm a nice, normal person, and nice, normal people don't have passion. Ah, but I still want a great career. I'm not prepared to pursue my passion, so I know what I'm going to do because I have a solution. I have a strategy; it's the one mommy and daddy told me about. Mommy and daddy told me that if I worked hard, I'd have a good career.

So if you work hard, have a good career; if you work really, really, really hard, you'll have a great career. Doesn't act like mathematically makes sense, but you've managed to talk yourself into that. You know what? Here's a little secret; you want to work. You want to work really, really, really hard. You know what? You'll succeed. The world will give you the opportunity to work really, really, really hard. But are you so sure that that's going to give you a great career when all the evidence is to the contrary?

So let's assume, let's deal with those of you who are trying to find your passion. You actually understand that you really had better do it; never mind the excuses. You're trying to find your passion, and you're so happy you found something you're interested in. I have an interest, you tell me. You say, I have an interest. I say, that's wonderful! And what are you trying to tell me that you... well, I have an interest. I say, do you have a passion?

I have an interest, you say. Your interest is compared to what? Well, I'm interested in this. And what about the rest of humanity's activities? I'm not interested in them. You've looked at them all, have you? No, not exactly. Passion is your greatest love. Passion is the thing that will help you create the highest expression of your talent.

Passion and interest, it's not the same thing. Are you really going to go to your sweetie and say, marry me, you are interesting? Won't happen. Won't happen, and you will die alone. What you want, what you want, what you want is passion. It is beyond interest. You need twenty interests, and then one of them, one of them might grab you; one of them might engage you more than anything else, and then you may have found your greatest love in comparison to all the other things that interest you, and that's what passion is.

I have a friend who proposed to his sweetie. He was an economic, a rational person. He said to his sweetie: let us marry; let us merge our interests. Yes, he did. I love you, truly, he said. I love you deeply. I love you more than any other woman I've ever encountered. I love you more than Mary Jane, Susie, Penelope, Ingrid, Gertrude, Gretel. I was on a German exchange program.

Then I love you more than Penneth. Alright, she left the room halfway through his enumeration of his love for her. After he got over his surprise at being hit up and turned down, he concluded he'd had a narrow escape from marrying an irrational person. Although he did make a note to himself that the next time he proposed, it was perhaps not necessary to enumerate all the women he had auditioned for the part.

But the point stands: you must look for alternatives so that you find your destiny. Or are you afraid of the word 'destiny'? The real destiny, the word 'destiny', scare you? And that's what we're talking about. If you don't find the highest expression of your talent, if you settle for 'interesting', whatever that means, do you know what will happen?

At the end of your long life, your friends and family would gather in the cemetery, and there beside your gravesite will be a tombstone, and inscribed on that tombstone it will say: Here lies a distinguished engineer who invented Velcro. But what that tombstone should have said in an alternative lifetime, what it should have said if it was your highest expression of talent, was: Here lies the last Nobel laureate in physics who formulated the grand unified field theory and demonstrated the practicality of warp drive. Velcro indeed! One was a great career; one was a missed opportunity.

But then there are some of you, in spite of all these excuses, you will find your passion, and you'll still fail. You can fail because you're not going to do it because you'll have invented a new excuse. Any excuse to fail to take action. And this excuse, I've heard so many times: yes, I would pursue a great career, but I value human relationships more than accomplishment.

I want to be a great friend. I want to be a great spouse. I want to be a great parent, and I will not sacrifice them on the altar of great accomplishment. What do you want to just say no? Do you want me to say, "Now, tell you, really I swear I don't kick children"? Look at the worldview you've given yourself, you're a hero no matter what. And I, by suggesting ever so delicately that you might want a great career, let's take children.

I don't hate children. I don't kick them. Yes, there was a little kid wandering through this building when I came here, and no, I didn't kick him. Of course, I had to tell him the building was for adults only and to get out. He mumbled something about his mother, and I told him she'd probably find him outside anyway. Last time I saw, he was on the stairs crying. What a wimp!

Well, but that, what do you mean? That's what you expect me to say. Do you really think, you really think it's appropriate that you should actually take children and use them as a shield? You know what will happen someday? You, you ideal parent, the kid will come to you someday and say, I know I want to be, I know what I'm gonna do with my life. You were so happy; it's a conversation a parent wants to hear. That's your kid's good at math, and you know you're going to like what comes next. Says your kid, I have decided I want to be a magician. I want to perform magic tricks on the stage.

And what do you say? You say, you say, um, that's risky, kid; might fail. Kid, don't make a lot of money at that kid, you know, I don't know kid, you should think about that again. Kid, you're so good at math, why don't you—? The kid interrupts you and says, but it is my dream. It is my dream to do this, and what are you going to say? You know what you're gonna say? Look, kid, I had a dream once too, but... but it's how you're gonna finish the sentence with your 'but.'

But I dreamt too once, kid, but I was afraid to pursue it. Or are you gonna tell them this: I had a dream once, kid, but then you were born? Do you really, do you really want to use your family? Do you really ever want to look at your spouse and your kid and see your jailers? There was something you could have said to your kid when he or she said I have a dream.

You could have said, look the kid in the face and said go for it, kid, just like I did. But you won't be able to say that because you didn't. So you can't, and so the sins of the parents are visited on the poor children. Why will you seek refuge in human relationships as your excuse not to find and pursue your passion? You know why? In your heart of hearts, you know why.

And I, being deadly serious, you know why you would get all warm and fuzzy and wrap yourself up in human relationships. It is because you are—you know what you are. You are afraid to pursue your passion. You're afraid to look ridiculous. You're afraid to try. You're afraid you may fail. Great friend, great spouse, great parent, great career—it's not not a package. It's not not who you are. Help you be one without the other, but you are afraid, and that's why you are not going to have a great career, unless, unless... that most evocative of all English words: unless.

What the unless word is also attached to that other most terrifying phrase: if only I had! If only I had! If you ever have that thought ricocheting in your brain, it will hurt a lot. So those are the many reasons why you're going to fail to have a great career, unless, unless... Thank you.