A very common question talked about amongst people my age is weather or not it is worth it to take a particular course of action. “Is it worth it to work this job?” is a common one. Less common but still of significance are things like “Should I do this club?” or “Is this harder course worth it?”.

These are questions that are important to ask because there is a very small window in life where these are even worth considering. [1] As times goes on, more becomes set in stone. But as a 18-20 year old, almost nothing is set in stone. You can make your own path.

You absolutely should think about these things. If you aren’t, it’s likely because you’ve found something you enjoy so much that you seldom question weather it’s worth it or not. That is a very nice position to be in; likely the minority of cases.

In the majority of cases, the answer becomes more complicated. How do you begin to think about weather something is worth perusing or not? A good answer is how shouldn’t think about it. What you shouldn’t do is think about worth in terms of outcomes. This is a dangerous game. By even thinking about weather something is worth it or not, you are inherently attaching yourself to the outcome of your actions. But you have no control over the outcomes. In-fact, you have so little control over the outcomes that your actions in whatever your pursuit is almost always lead to outcomes that you never could have predicted.

Does that mean that the outcomes aren’t important? Of course not, but it does mean that the outcomes are not the point. A good example of this is you trying to repair a faucet. If you spent 3 hours trying to figure out what was wrong with the faucet, and realize you simply had the wrong part - you wouldn’t call the 3 hours a “waste of time” [2] - even though the faucet isn’t changed. Ideally, it got changed - but the time you put it isn’t a waste even if the outcome isn’t ideal.

We can view this example in a more broader sense. What you put in is not what you get out. Or more succinctly, outcomes are not linear. Your inputs don’t map directly to your outputs. Some people like to explain this with working smarter not harder, and although there is an element of truth in this (for example, working 5 hours doesn’t matter if you aren’t working on the right thing) - the opposite is far more interesting and pertinent. It’s often times the case that you must put in more work to get a far less appealing outcome. You study 10 hours just to barely scrape by on a test. Or you apply to 500 jobs to just get one interview. Read 100 papers before you find a novel idea. These are real scenarios that require enormous input for an outcome that seem to stack up much poorer in comparison.

It should be more obvious now that if you did those things and question weather they are worth it, the answer would obviously be no. It would be hard to justify to yourself, on the 237th job application, that you should apply to nearly 200 more. Or on the 4th hour of studying at 2AM, that you should study a couple more. The outcome has no tangible bearing on your motivation during your pursuit, and it’s effect on you after is unlikely to justify the means by which you got there. Even if you end up getting the job after 500 applications, if you try to convince yourself it was now worth it to do all of that to end up in this position - you’d struggle. The same goes for all the other examples I made.

So here comes the crux of what we’re talking about. The outcome will never make you satisfied. What may make you satisfied, and in turn what may be able to convince you that something is worth it - is the means by which you got to said outcome. If you can learn to enjoy working extremely hard, putting in significant hours towards something - then the outcome becomes trivial and almost unimportant.

It’s natural that a first reaction to effort without guaranteed success is frustration. But what if the value of what you’re doing isn’t in the outcome at all? The process of doing hundreds of problems, dozens of paper readings teaches you skills, resilience, perspective, hardening that are invaluable. One could go as far as to say that the outcome is actually less important than this. If you squeaked by on an exam and got a good grade without doing any of this, your outcome robs you of the stuff we just talked about. Results don’t encapsulate growth, and only effort reveals it. Equally as much, the absence of the process towards an outcomes deprives you of seeing personal growth. There is a tendency in high-expectation fields and circles to be stringent on evaluating yourself on where you are. A far more kinder, and far more reasonable approach, is to grade yourself on growth. Looking at where you are currently proves to be almost useless when you consider how minuscule the current moment is in the grand scheme of things. You are obviously likely, for better or for worse, to perceive yourself in a better light when you get a job offer versus when you fail an interview. The approach that I just laid out would have you realize that the outcome is besides the point here. You should observe, instead, that one year ago you might have not even got to the interview stage - so whatever inputs you put in to get yourself to that stage are what made it worth it at all.

The final thing I’ll say about looking past the outcome is that the act of immersing yourself in something challenging is inherently satisfying. Learning to like doing things that you may not enjoy is an important thing to come to terms with. Not because you should do them for the rest of your life [3], but rather - because it is these situations where you test yourself the most. It’s very easy to get immersed in something you enjoy doing. I like reading, it’s very easy for me to get immersed in a genre I enjoy. Less easy is getting into something I don’t enjoy as much - and while that doesn’t mean I should stop reading everything else, it does mean I gain a lot from simply reading something I have less interest in. Difficulty produces growth. Weather it’s satisfying is hard to say, but doing hard things and showing up often towards them is satisfying in it of itself.

It should be freeing when you consider the outcome of whatever you pursue to be irrelevant. What would make the whole pursuit in front of you worth it has nothing to do with your success at that thing. The only question you should ask yourself is, will this make me grow?

Notes