My wife and I have had a laugh or two recently over the sheer number of middle-aged men we know who went to see the band Rush at Madison Square Garden earlier this month.
It’s a guy thing — especially (by reputation) guys born between say 1960 and 1975. Honestly, I probably would have dragged my wife along if I had realized they were playing here. I mean, how many more chances would we get?
In fact, one woman we know whose husband convinced her to come along said she realized it was the only concert she’s ever been to where the line for the ladies’ room was nowhere near as long as it was for the men’s room.
O.K. hold that thought — Rush, not the bathrooms.
Because my wife and I dated in college. Then we broke up and had almost no contact for close to 20 years.
We ran into each other again at our 20th college reunion. Things moved pretty quickly after that.
I’ve told this story before here a few times, I think. But now and then, because our life together has turned out so well, one of us will say we wish we had never broken up. Or that we had found our way back to each other after five years instead of 20.
Maybe. But there were plenty of other ways it could have gone.
We could have missed the reunion. (Fortunately, it was not the same weekend as Rush.)
We could have seen each other and felt nothing. (Highly unlikely, but possible.)
We could have had one awkward conversation and left it there. (I am pretty good at launching awkward conversations.)
Instead, we got back together while we were still young enough to build a life together. I will take that outcome.
Now, some new research from the University of Macau and the University of Houston made me think about this in terms of work and careers.
The study, published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, looked at people who stop waiting for complete certainty before making career decisions.
Hui Xu, a psychologist at the University of Macau and the study’s lead author, said many people put too much pressure on themselves to find exactly the right job.
The problem is that no amount of research can tell you exactly how a job will feel six months from now.
Xu and co-author Blake Allan of the University of Houston call the ability to deal with that uncertainty “career wisdom.”
Basically, it’s the ability to gather information, think about what matters to you, and make decisions – despite knowing all the while that you’ll never actually have all the information you need.
Having higher “career wisdom” in the study correlated to people feeling more meaning, having higher job satisfaction and engagement, and even higher overall life satisfaction.
The whole idea reminded me of Daniel Kahneman’s work on decision-making.
Kahneman wrote about the value of collecting evidence before relying on intuition—accepting that there is a limit to how much evidence you can collect, and lingering doubts might just mean that you know the decision matters.
I have talked with many people over the years who were considering quitting jobs, changing careers, starting a business, or taking some other professional risk. Heck, after I went viral for “quitting my new job after just 1 day,” I’d have people reaching out to me almost on the daily to ask if I thought they should quit their jobs, too.
Usually, they had several choices that could plausibly work. What bothered them was having no way to know which one would look smartest later.
But that’s how life works, right?
I guess I didn’t have that kind of confidence in my 20s. I did not know much about careers, and probably even less about relationships.
That said, around the time of our reunion nearly two decades later, I had no idea what would happen if I went over and said hello.
Still, I accepted the uncertainty and turned on my obvious charm.
It worked out unusually well!
As the late Neil Peart of Rush (as sung by Geddy Lee) put it: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!”
So, go to reunions. Heck, go to concerts! Maybe take the job!
Just make the decision to go.
Other things worth knowing …
The Guardian: The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can proceed with a nationwide crackdown on mail-in voting, approving its emergency appeal. It remains unclear how the administration can implement the decision in time for the November midterms, and the ruling leaves room for further legal challenges.
CNBC: President Trump said Monday the U.S. will raise tariffs on imports of cars, trucks, and auto parts from Canada to 50% on January 1, 2027, following a breakdown in trade negotiations last week. “Canada has been ripping off the United States of America for years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding: “Someone should get these clowns to ‘fall in line’ or, the consequences for Canada will be far WORSE!”
AP: A man waiting for his son to return from the USS Lincoln was arrested by Border Patrol. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” the Department of Homeland Security said, adding that the Trump administration “does not pick and choose which laws to enforce.”
Politico: The intensifying late-summer backlash against data centers is inspiring panic in some corners of the tech sector. “AI is going to be a massive issue for the presidential election in a way that technology has never been an issue,” a representative from a major AI company told Politico. “Nobody wants to lose their job and they’re already feeling squeezed while these very, very rich people who are richer than anything we have ever seen in the history of Earth are making more.”
CNBC: Amazon said Wednesday it plans to offer drone deliveries in nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of the year — a sixfold increase from its current footprint, and a sign of momentum for a project that’s been slow to develop since Jeff Bezos first laid out his vision for it almost 13 years ago.
AP: Harvard Medical School says it agreed to pay $53 million to settle class action lawsuits by relatives of body donors whose remains were sold on the black market by its former morgue manager.
NBC News: Dan Sullivan endorses Dan Sullivan to beat Dan Sullivan in a perplexing Alaska Senate race. A former Anchorage mayor named Dan Sullivan threw his support behind Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in his race against — among others — former teacher Dan J. Sullivan. Democrats view the seat as one they could flip in November; the Cook Political Report rates the race a tossup.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Bharathi Kannan on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!
And sometimes by not choosing a new path, you realize you're already doing what you were meant to do. Or maybe that's just me, 20 years into a career and still unsure if it was the right one because it wasn't the one I envisioned growing up. It was! I just didn't feel it yet. Once I did, the pieces all fit and happiness was mine.
no comment, well, not yet anyway, about your article today, except I've heard that before, if you choose not to decide, you've made a choice... what I do want to say is thinking about an article you've recently posted about talking to folks. Randomly having short conversations w/ strangers. Yesterday this happened to/for me. I went to Costco & I arrived a bit before they opened, & the spot I usually like to park in, 'cause it's right next to the cart drop off, was taken by a couple who had just arrived & getting their young child out. I waited to pull in next to them - there weren't any other cars that I would bother. I was behind them before the doors opened, so we had about 10 minutes to talk, which he started by saying, "I like your car." I smiled and said, "I do too." He said, "How fast does it go?" I said, "I haven't found out, but it gets going fast, quickly & they call it a race car w/ a license plate." I told him it's the first new car I've had in 37 or so yrs & I got it for the safety features & described what the salesman had me do on the test drive. Then we talked about kid stuff, lots of kid stuff. The little girl w/ them was about 3 & had huge brown eyes & was staring at me the whole time. I'd give her a quick wink & continue talking to her mom & dad. She smiled back at one point. They also have a 4 yr old in preK. As the door opened, he said, "It was fun talk'n to ya." I said, "It was fun talk'n to y'all, too." Not that it matters, but they were a different race.