Quarter Life Crisis

Assuming she lives till 100, today would be the quarter life mark of my wonderful girlfriend, Cindy. Although at quarter life, she is a perfect example of someone who is not suffering from a quarter life crisis. Unlike many of us who are in the world of finance, engineering, consulting, law, medicine, etc - she chose the path of something she grew up doing and realized she had a passion for upon applying for college in high school - performing and teaching the piano. Equally considerable to following her dreams, she has parents who are encouraging, supportive and open to her pursuing a non-conventional career. How awesome is that, Asian parents not forcing you to major in business, science or engineering. Not to say that her path has been easy - she’s done quite a bit of soul searching, keyboard pounding, and exploration herself to find the niche within the broad field of piano that she’s best suited for. Notice that the energy and frustration has been focused in the field of piano. She did something she likes and now shes beaming all that energy into it. Instead, those of us suffering from the quarter life crisis are obsessing over how we don’t really like what we’re doing and what we might like doing better and as a result, dilute our focus from succeeding in this profession. Cindy’s approach (might I add that she is also an avid practitioner of the Death-Ground Strategy) is how you stay focused and get ahead in your career - but, yeah, it all starts out with picking the right career and having the freedom and support to do so early in life. Or else, you sort of have no choice but to just make lemonade from the lemons that you are equipped with. Not to say you can’t make a career change later in life, it’s just that you’ll need to be able to tolerate and accept the fact that you’re going to be quite a bit behind the curve.

Ah, what a perfect trio - talent, work ethic and supportive parents. Happy birthday, Cindy! If you’re interested in learning the piano, read her blog here.

Now for me, back to due diligence on the small business lending and secondary markets scoring analytics and intermediation industry……. hooray(?).

Update on the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. To those of you who are not familiar with this book, check out the wiki. It’s essentially a “guide to the subtle social game of everyday life informed by the … military principles in war.” It’s been a fun read so far, especially the first section on “Self Directed Warfare”. Here’s one strategy that I’ve already begun implementing:

Create a Sense of Urgency and Desperation: The Death-Ground Strategy. When there are no other options, people fight harder. If the choice is life or death they have nothing to lose.

The idea is to take on more than you think you can handle and meet the challenge. If you always try to work within in your established comfort zone, you may never discover what you are really capable of. When people are pushed to the edge and are left with no options but to succeed, they are forced to attain a level of focus and creativity that does not exist without that type of pressure.

This is one way to get yourself out of your quarter life crisis: jump into unfamiliar territory and “depend on your wits and energy to see you through” instead of being insecure and indecisive about the future.

Wall St, Law or Medicine. They forgot Engineering.

A direct quote from a good friend of mine:

“I had dinner w/ my VP and his wife last nite and my VP was telling her how I was going through my quarter life crisis.”

She said “I don’t understand. I’m from a third-world country (India). I understand economic crisis, hunger crisis, security crisis. I don’t understand quarter life crisis.”

Puts things in perspective. Although I would argue that it’s all relative.

Here’s a review on the quarter life crisis from GetRichSlowly.com.  Sounds like it’s really not worth the read - its just a series of interviews about people like us talking about their issues.  Why would you need to read about other peoples’ crisis when you can just talk to almost any of your closest friends? Anyways, there’s some inspirational ideas in it that are pretty handy.  Check out the book review for Quarter Life Crisis.

” 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene is a “guide to the subtle social game of everyday life informed by the … military principles in war.”. ^[1] It consists of discussions and examples on offensive and defensive strategies from a wide variety of people and conditions such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Lawrence of Arabia, Alexander the Great, and the Tet Offensive.^[2]The book is divided into five parts: Self-Directed Warfare, Organizational (Team) Warfare, Defensive Warfare, Offensive Warfare and Unconventional (Dirty) Warfare. ^[1] Each part contains a differing number of strategies, each in a chapter. Each chapter has a similar layout. Descriptions of battles, political and business situations are accompanied by Greene’s interpretation. There are occasional instructional sections followed by examples. All chapters end with a “Reversal” to give a brief discussion of where the strategy may not apply, a contrary view or defense. Throughout the book Mr. Greene includes quotes from a variety of sources. These are incorporated in the margins and between sections.

Although one reviewer has called the book “an indispensable book, [which] provides all the psychological ammunition you need to overcome patterns of failure and forever gain the upper hand,”^[3] another one found it “perplexing — if not downright unhealthy — [to publish] a book on the lessons of war for everything but war at a time when we [Canada] are, er, at war.”^[4] Yet another reviewer found the book’s coverage of military history informative, but the political tales “mostly foolish or just plain wrong”.^[5]

The author’s blog -Power, Seduction and War: The Robert Greene Blog - expands on many of the themes from the book which he commonly refers to as The WAR Book.”

“From Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creative team behind “My So-Called Life,” “thirtysomething,” “Legends of the Fall,” and “Blood Diamond,” comes NBC’s new show “quarterlife,” the first network-quality series that was produced first for the Internet.Known for their incisive portrayals of relationships and experience during life’s key passages, Herskovitz and Zwick take on the crucial years between 20 and 30 in “quarterlife,” when so many of life’s important decisions are made. “quarterlife” tells the ongoing stories of six creative people in their twenties. As with Herskovitz and Zwick’s earlier series, at the center of “quarterlife” is a commitment to realism and the recognition of universal human themes through the truthful depiction of the way young people speak, work, think, love, argue, and just have fun.”

Obviously NBC thinks there’s a market for quarter life crisis-ers. Haven’t checked it out yet but there are a few episodes online at NBC.com.

So I just met with a gentleman who wanted to buy my Kaplan/Schweser CFA Level 1 study books. We had a brief chat, where he mentioned that he was working at a medical device company and he holds an undergrad biomedical engineering degree as well as a MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Besides preparing for the CFA exam himself, his brother is also preparing to take it. His brother has a JD and is working [unhappily] at a law firm.

MBAs and JDs are usually the finale. The final degree. With which it’s assumed you know specifically what you want to do within the bounds of business or law. However, these two brothers still do not know what they want to do. They both are not satisfied with their degrees and their jobs. Why else would they be taking the exam?

There are so many people in this situation. 20-30 years of age, well-educated, yet no idea where he or she fits in the world.

This guy is an motivational speaker and author.  He has 7 children, 6 of whom have their own businesses.  He has this new book called How to Raise A Future Millionaire.

If I don’t make it, I’ll be sure to read that book so my kids can make it for me. haha

• “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Tim Ferriss
  
• “The 33 Strategies of War (Joost Elffers Books)” by Robert Greene
  
• “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene
  
• “Venture Capital Due Diligence: A Guide to Making Smart Investment Choices and Increasing Your Portfolio Returns” by Justin Camp