After working on countless projects, I’ve recently made it a serious goal to become employed by a company where I can create value and learn.
This is the first time I’ve wanted to be employed ever in my life.
So what changed? Am I optimizing for a different set of priorities? Have I given up on my dreams of becoming a serial entrepreneur and an independent artist? The answers to these questions stem from my past year in the Korean military. My life here as a soldier taught me a couple things that made me change my outlook on work and freedom.
1. Freedom of time is not a virtue
The biggest motivator of my dreams of becoming an independent artist / founder was that I wanted to own my time. I did not want anyone else to dictate how I spend my time. Living in the army, a disciplined environment where I do not have control over my time, made me realize that time is not an asset you can save up like money. Time is meant to be spent, committed, and exchanged.
By my second year of college, I found it difficult to commit to anything. I was scared that any form of commitment was locking away future time that could have been spent doing something better. I looked down upon normal jobs, student clubs, formal organizations. But, by not committing to a single thing, I was not saving time, I was losing it. I wasted valuable time that was given to me to be spent arduously on a job, a relationship, a research problem, an organization, so forth.
My life so far has been like wandering around tasting counters. I’ve lived around the world with several different titles: [student, rapper, songwriter, software engineer, soldier, founder, “frat guy”]. While I found success in a lot of these positions, I haven’t committed deeply enough to any of these titles to the point where I fully identified with it. My time was always divided and so were my identities.
Working as a soldier here, I fully identify myself with the work that I do here and it makes me happy. I spend my 8-to-5s serving the country, and spend time off by learning and writing. Although my time is the furthest thing away from being “mine”, I feel a sense of alignment that I’ve never felt before, a freedom of the mind, not of time. I believe that I can find this alignment outside the army (which is not without its negatives, or else I’d just stay here) by committing my time into companies with high talent density and mission-driven culture.
2. Consistent effort requires a community
Here in the army, I go through the same motions every single day. I am required to; soldiers are enforced by a system and a community. I am surprised now at how much joy I find in this communal system of living in rituals. Previously, I was bounded by endless opportunities and ideas that I could not stick to for more than a month. I realize now, that since I worked on most of these ideas alone, I had the easy option of quitting or neglecting the project until I moved onto the next idea.
Looking back, most of the times I’ve stuck to a single endeavor was when I was a part of a team. That is how I kept myself accountable and was able to start profitable startups or projects that led to results. Social friction kept me from slipping away from focused work.
Of course, not everyone is the same as me. There are many people who can stick to things by themselves until they succeed. But I have too many ideas. The least resistant path for me is to simply explore a new idea when my current one becomes stale. My experience at the army is what showed me that it’s possible for me to keep working past excitement through habits and rituals. When the initial spark of motivation subdues, I need a system and a community to keep me working until the fruits of my labor ripen.