This is the fifth in a series on under-discussed keys to career success and personal satisfaction. The first installment was on titration: In each situation, consciously deciding how intense, effortful, intellectual, etc. to be. The second installment was on gaining resilience. The third was on the art of making others feel good about themselves. The fourth was on efficiency. The sixth is on composure.
Here, I turn to practicality. We’re praised for dreaming big. You know, “Dream it and you can do it.” Being practical used to be a compliment but is increasingly viewed as settling, not "being all you could be."
Yet, most of my successful and contented clients, colleagues, and friends err toward practicality, weighing the costs and benefits of following the dream—for example, trying to make a living in the arts or in activism, where most work as volunteers.
In a talk I gave last week to counselors, I suggested that counselors should help clients assess the risk of being self-employed in a cutting-edge field. An audience member insisted I was wrong: “I used to work with venture capitalists and I saw the intoxicating joy of being at the cutting edge. We shouldn’t pour water on people’s dreams.” I reminded her that even most successful people spend far less time joyfully basking at the cutting edge than on tedium and on struggling with problems that no one heretofore could solve. More central, the vast majority of cutting-edge initiatives end up bleeding edge; guinea pigs often die. I thus argued that to accept clients’ long-shot dreams without helping them assess the risk-reward is akin to a physician agreeing to a patient-suggested treatment without disclosing the odds of it working and its side effects. She was not convinced but I am.
Of course, practicality also applies to how one approaches a task. It’s easy to propose a big, bold approach, but the practical person assesses the risk-reward ratio. Sure, the prospect of developing a breakthrough approach is exciting but what are its odds of success? What surer-to-succeed approach must be forgone in pursuing that high-risk/high-payoff option? Sure, sometimes it’s worth a big risk, but the practical person doesn’t viscerally get swept up by the promise; s/he clear-eyedly also considers the perils.
Practicality’s value is also under-appreciated in one’s personal life. Most people, when young, dreamt of a storybook marriage, and on finding themselves in a relationship in which the story is no fairy tale, the romantic type continues to press for the dream while the practical person clear-eyedly assesses the risks and benefits of further trying to improve the relationship versus accepting the status quo versus getting out.
An article on practicality would be better received if it bestowed more praise on romanticism, but given the disproportionate attention the media gives to “follow your dream” with far less attention to the probabilities of success, it may be more helpful to have given this shout-out for that under-appreciated key to career success and personal satisfaction: practicality.
