As if Complexification isn’t enough, it looks like we’re over-thinking things too. What I don’t get is if we have so little time that we can’t simplify things, why are we taking all of our precious time wasting it with over-thinking?
Case in point – Career Angst. Fifty years ago, you found something you moderately liked doing that paid OK and you stuck to it. You might have moved around a bit to progress but you wouldn’t have been spending all your time analyzing whether or not you were optimizing your career.
I meet from time to time for lunch with friends, a number of whom have been in relatively the same career or job as when they started work. While some are miserable just because that’s who they are, others are perfectly happy and not worried about what they could be doing instead.
Others however are constantly hoping around trying to optimize their career experience. And as I look to Gen Y I see more and more of this jumpy optimizing behaviour.
Thing is that those friends who have stuck with relatively the same thing for their whole careers are decidedly better off than those of us (myself included) who are jumping around, always in search of something better.
I think we might all be better off keeping it simple and letting some things just happen rather than always be over-thinking.