Why you will fail to have a great career

This is a beautiful talk, one that addresses something I’d felt strongly about since I started thinking seriously about my professional life back when I was studying at Temasek Polytechnic.

I remember sitting in the lecture hall, listening to an entrepreneur who had been invited to speak to us business students. During the Q&A, I couldn’t help but ask if his business success had come at the price of family.

I can’t quite recall what he said, but I suspect it had something to do with it not being quite the answer I had hoped: “no”.

It’s been more than a decade on. Having been through two years of National Service, another two overseas at UWA (University of Western Australia), marriage, and five years of relatively productive work, my question remains. Still unanswered.

But this time, the perspective’s a little different. I’m asking it from the inside. I’m living the answer, writing it as I go along. So far so good, but I think I’ve got a little bit more capacity for that weirdness; that abnormification; that passion to burst onto the scene.

So when my child questions why I haven’t lived my dream, I won’t have to say, “because of you.”