Phil Garland

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the person I want to become. A lot of times I have absolutely no clue but there are certain things I want in my life. For one, happiness. I want to be happy to wake up every morning no matter my circumstances. Two, I don’t want to spend my time around people who aren’t making it better. Call me selfish, but as I grow older I realize I only have so much time to make an impact on the world. I don’t want to waste time around people who won’t make me better. The last thing I want in my life is to forgive whatever is outside of my control.

As someone who is big on processes, systems, efficiencies and doing things the “right” way, it’s always been hard for me to let go of what I can’t control. Back when Amazon didn’t have two-day shipping (yes, I’m old enough to remember those days) I used to go crazy waiting for a package to arrive. The anticipation was always greater than whatever was in the box. I always wanted whatever it was, right away. And I wanted it to meet my expectations.

In life, you’ll meet tons of people and opportunities that don’t meet your expectations. You’ll think you’re finding the perfect thing for yourself but really you’re teasing yourself with anticipation. No person, no opportunity, will ever make you whole. The only way to make yourself whole is by forgiving the outside world. The world didn’t make you the way you are. Your brain did. Both biologically and through your upbringing.

By focusing on the things you control, and forgiving others for actions that don’t match your expectations/anticipation, you gain self-control. You gain self-confidence. What I’ve learned as I’ve grown older is I am my own catalyst of making my life what I want it to be. And using my time to take control of my life is what will lead to success. Other people’s actions shall not have an impact on my perception of success.

“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

We’ve all heard that quote. I think it’s generalizing life far too much. You’ll never know what you love without doing a lot of different things. By trying new things you might discover stuff you hate. You also might discover stuff you like. You might stumble upon passion projects that you obsess over for days, weeks, months or years.

As someone who just started his fifth job in five years, I can tell you I’m always looking for the thing I love. But I am also cognisant of things I hate or don’t like very much. I try to avoid the latter but sometimes I get roped into them without prior knowledge. 

The biggest thing that’s helped me keep my passion up and continue unlocking new doors is by following my infatuations.

As a kid, I remember becoming obsessed with a baseball card game. My friend and I would spend days playing a simple game with a deck of cards, completely driven by luck. But we would track every statistic imagineable. Then, I’d gather all our sheets of data and enter them into Excel. I was far too young to know what I was doing, but I’d find it fun to see which team was statiscally the best, again, based on luck.

Today, I work almost entirely in Excel. I love it. It’s the way I can see how a business operates. A way to make sense out of an over abundance of numbers. A way to teach myself advanced Excel language and find exactly the solution for my problem. 

I’ve always been infatuated with data, especially trackable data sets. There’s something about it that makes me come alive. I don’t look it as work but as a following of passions.

My point is, I don’t think you find your passion by asking the question “what job will make me come alive?” Instead, you find the perfect job for yourself by trying new things and sticking to stuff you’ve been infatuated with for a while. It might be something little, a weird hobby or quirk, or it might be a question you’ve always wanted to answer. No matter what, there’s something out there for you to do. You just need to be aware of the things that make you come alive.

I don’t know about you, but my Facebook feed lately has had a ton of mentions of Gary V, Tim Ferris, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. All of these guys are at the top of their respective fields. Each of them has a way they got to where they are. But what they say and do isn’t what will work for you. When they say stuff, they’re speaking from past experiences, not in the moment.

The people who can give you the best advice are the people going through the struggle. The ones who haven’t arose from the ashes. The people who are fighting for their livelihood. Last time I checked, none of those guys were. 

The best person in the world to give you advice is yourself. Throw out motivational quotes. Stop thinking about other people’s success stories. Instead, focus on what makes you come alive. Find the stuff you hate doing and eliminate it from your life. Listening to somebody talk on YouTube may create good tidbits of information but that won’t create the life you want to live. 

Focusing on yourself, and what your mind is telling you, is what will work for you. Take advice from others with massive grain of salt.

I was always jealous of the people who could study for the test. The people who didn’t always know the material but could still get a 100% on an exam by studying the night before. Or the 1600 SAT takers who memorized only the required information. I was never that student. I couldn’t sit down and study the necessary material because everything fascinated me.

Once, I was supposed to be studying all the bones in the human body, instead, I learned everything about how the arm works. I had gotten fixated on how to figure out why we have an ulna and a radius that I forgot to study the rest of the bones. I failed my test. But I learned how to learn. 

Luckily, the real world is far different than the classroom.

For me, learning is a way to explore questions. I set out with a hypothesis, some grand vision in my mind, and I work my ass off to figure out a solution. Every step I have taken in my career has that objective in mind. I am always looking to explore ideas that I’ve developed throughout my life. Much like studying the human arm, I get fixated on a certain objective and won’t stop until I arrive at a satisfactory answer. Although this might keep me from seeing the whole picture, like the entire anatomy of the human body, the specialization creates new skills. Eventually, those skills combine into a well-rounded skillset.

Learning how you learn is far more important than learning for a test. Anyone can memorize formulas or definitions. Not everyone can take lessons learned from mutliple perspectives and apply them to make a whole. Learning the way you learn is your competitive advantage.