Consider the opposite
An input into making interesting career decisions
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This is a guest post.
People love best practices.
What’s your first step if you want to travel to Italy? Or decide which career path to take? Or learn your favorite song on the piano? Or decide which company to join? Or manage your team effectively?
You ask someone. You Google. You Google again but this time with “reddit” at the end of your query. Sometimes you don’t even have to ask around: social media algorithms figure out what you want and serve you content about it. People in your life hear about your interest and start offering confident unsolicited advice.
The answers come fast and loud and clear. Go to Rome and Tuscany. Choose a career that’s stable and pays well. Don’t try learning your favorite song just yet—instead pay a teacher and begin by learning theory. Join the popular fast-growing company that just raised a Series C. Set lots of OKRs.
Often these best practices don’t offer much room for disagreement. People use words like must and need and have to. They may even make you feel silly for not following their advice.
Our crazy-sounding but totally reasonable idea when people give you advice is to consider the opposite.
Literally, consider the opposite. Anytime somebody gives you a recommendation, or a piece of advice, or tells you that you need to do something, ask yourself—what would the complete opposite of that be?
How to consider the opposite
The key word here is consider. Not necessarily do. But consider. Here’s what that may look like.
Someone says you can’t do X without Y prior experience → what if you tried it anyway?
Someone says you need to do quarterly planning → what if you just did daily check-ins?
Someone says you need to live in NYC or SF when you’re in your early 20s → what if you moved to Tokyo, or Seoul, or some random village in southern Argentina?
Someone says you need an internship at a particular company during your sophomore year in college → what if you used that time to find a beach in South America and write a book?
Someone says you need to visit one place on your vacation → what if you went to a completely different region of the country that’s hundreds of miles away?
Someone says you need to pay an instructor to learn something → what if you learned on your own?
Someone says you need to read one specific book → what if you found an old, random, niche book in a totally different genre and read that instead?
Someone says you should only visit a country during XYZ months → what if you visited during the complete opposite time of year?
You could even apply it to this essay. What if you didn’t consider the opposite? (We don’t recommend that, but you should consider it!)
We think this is important because, if you follow the median advice, you will probably end up with median outcomes. Sometimes that might be what you want. If five of your friends are great at guitar and they all give you the same advice about learning, following that advice might also help you to become great at guitar.
In general, though, we think the common outcomes for people in life are not all that inspiring. And so we are suggesting that you consider the opposite.
Advice for not becoming Well Actually personified
There’s a funny clip on YouTube of Neil deGrasse Tyson on Joe Rogan explaining why he doesn’t put a case on his phone. His point is that not having a case on his phone makes him more aware of the fact that he shouldn’t drop it. He compares it to carrying around expensive pens, which he claims he doesn’t lose because he knows they are expensive. The clip is a great example of why this essay’s title is “consider the opposite”, not “do the opposite and then brag about it on Rogan.”
Just because the opposite exists doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, or that you should do it. Most times you should not even say the opposite in conversation: being a constant contrarian is annoying and not useful.
Considering the opposite, however, is helpful. Even if you end up making the decision that everyone told you to make, at least you didn’t follow the herd by default. You thought about what you could’ve done instead. It’s a good feeling, and it can help you minimize regret about the decisions you make.
Ready to put this into practice? Okay…
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Absolutely loved the animation in this essay! Would love to know how you made it🫶