The Point of Contentment: What it is and How to Get There
Because there are other ways to spend your mental energy than focus on your career.
I hope you advance your career as fast as possible.
Then I hope you reach a point when you stop advancing.
You don't need to strive for the next accolade, promotion, or accomplishment. At some point, you need to focus on other aspects of life.
How do you know it's time to stop grasping for the next thing?
When you hit the Point of Contentment
What's the Point of Contentment?
The Point of Contentment is the time in your career when you hit the sweet spot of:
- Meaningful work
- Sufficient compensation
- Alignment with your strengths
It's the point in time when you're satisfied with your career. You feel like you're making an impact, have enough money to fund your lifestyle, and you're doing work that's aligned with your innate strengths.
It's the point of diminishing returns.
The point where additional time spent on advancing your career doesn't proportionally improve your life.
If you advance past the Point of Contentment, you have more responsibilities at work and those responsibilities result in more stress. You might make more money too. If you inflate your lifestyle with the increase in funds, you have more to lose in the worst case scenario.
When you stop advancing, you have less stress and you protect yourself from lifestyle creep. You focus on other things in life.
Why the Point of Contentment matters
When you hit the Point of Contentment, you focus on other aspects of life that are meaningful to you.
Things like travel, hobbies, family time, or other pursuits.
This is what the Point of Contentment looks like for me:
- Spending time with my wife and two daughters
- Strength training
- Training jiu-jitsu
- Writing this newsletter
- Starting an online business
None of these pursuits would be possible if I was trying to squeeze all the juice out of my career.
I'm an Analytics Manager right now. Could I be a director already? Probably. Can I make 10-20% more money at another company? Most likely. Can I spend my free time getting better at my job? Definitely.
But then I would have fewer memories with my family, be physically weaker, have less self-defense skills, and not make progress on my creative pursuit.
When you realize what's on offer in other areas of your life, you realize that you should stop spending so much time at work and concentrate on getting to the Point of Contentment.
How to get to the Point of Contentment?
Advance in your career as fast as possible, try many things.
The faster you advance in your career, the faster you will learn where your Point of Contentment is.
Should you be an individual contributor or a manager? Do you want a lavish lifestyle that requires you to move up the corporate ladder? Are your hobbies free or costly? Are you better at building things or working with people? What type of work comes most naturally to you?
The way to answer these questions is to try many things. Be an IC then try out a leadership position. Strive for promotions and see if that gives you fulfillment. Work for different companies to learn what environment works best for you. Find meaningful hobbies outside of work to determine how much free time you want.
No one can tell you where your Point of Contentment is.
You have to find it for yourself.
Maybe you're already close.