Letter on career decision #3
To Khushi,
Have you seen Drive To Survive? If not, you should watch S1 (Netflix). It’s a great example of how storytelling can transform the way you look at an event. F1, by the design of it, is a biased sport. A sport with rich teams — Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull competing for the top 3 spots and relatively poorer teams — competing for the last 5. If you are a casual viewer, why would you be interested in the story of Haas, or Williams? Drive To Survive changed that for the F1 audience. They make you care about teams that cameras don’t zoom in on, or commentators don’t talk about in races because they are too far behind Max Verstappen.
If they were to make a movie on any one IPL team, I bet choosing RCB would make a better storyline than choosing MI. What’s MI’s story? The team with the biggest budget, with the biggest stadiums and a large supporter base? A team which was always top on the leaderboard (even in the years they got knocked out, they finished with more points than the winners). What’s so unimaginable about them winning 5 out of the 15 seasons? I imagine the day RCB would win the tournament, and that is all what guys would talk about for a whole year.
All compelling stories follow the 4C framework. It follows a Character with an overarching Challenge requiring them to come face-to-face with the Conflicts leading to the Climax.
What makes a good challenge? The challenge has to be something the character is not already capable of achieving. Because what’s the fun if the challenge is already within your reach? To achieve or overcome the challenge, the character faces a conflict. Will he be able to do it? Does he have what it takes? Will the sacrifice be worth it? Think of any great story, the conflict involves the character to change in a certain way. That’s what we like about stories. All great stories are stories of change, the characters coming to terms with their past, characters breaking through their limited beliefs, characters changing their views.
So what’s your challenge? To find out something that will be a good fit career wise. Is that a good challenge for a 25 year you? Yes because 25 year old you doesn’t know the answers. What’s the conflict here? There’s a strong pull towards the current path, because of the certainty it guarantees. A good life can be mapped out within Law and that’s very difficult to leave and start from scratch. This story has all the elements of being a good story already. So the only thing left is for the character to live the story till the climax. 30 year old you will be really proud to have been the protagonist of this story.
Here’s a little push of motivation to the current you starting this story.
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
— Haruki Murakami
Side Note - RCB doesn’t have a bad team. Instead they have bad luck. And that’s why their story is going to be the greatest! They are not competing with MI or CSK. They are competing with their bad luck. It's one of the biggest challenges to have — that the World is not in your favour. (wait for them to win).
All the best!
Further Unrelated Reading - https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/
I would go on to extend the above that the failures of kindness don't only have to be related to other people. It’s also a failure if you’re not being kind to yourself.