5. & Is Actually The Point
I’ve spent most of my life being told to minimize myself and “pick a lane.” Not necessarily literally all the time, but yes, sometimes, literally. I never really have.
And I’ll be honest about how that’s gone:
It has not led to fabulous riches.
Or unmitigated success.
Or even a clean, steady upward trajectory.
It has, at various points, honestly, made me poor and occasionally miserable. But in the larger accounting, the one measured in decades rather than quarters, the one that really matters when you start to consider the one “life” you get in this particular game we are all playing together, it’s made me happy in ways that staying in one lane never could have. Even if that means I’m not envied by all for my riches and fame. Ha!
The choices I’ve faced, made, and both loved and hated:
Art or commerce.
Creativity or operations.
Builder or storyteller.
Endurance athlete and explorer or business guy.
Design or management.
Strategist and thinker or executor.
The world works a bit like a highway. Late at night, when it’s empty, you can drift around. Fast, slow, left, right. The margins feel wide. During rush hour however, when things are busy and moving fast toward defined goals, people really want you to stay in your lane. It’s not just a suggestion. If you don’t, you will eventually hit someone. Or, more likely, you’ll make the effort, they’ll flip you off and you’ll inch back over “where you belong.”
Those lanes aren’t arbitrary. They’re anthropomorphic. A horse needs roughly two and a half to three feet of width. A person walking beside or passing needs another two to three feet. Add a little clearance so packs or loads don’t scrape walls and you end up at six to eight feet. Exactly the width of many historic lanes.
We built roads that way. Then we built carts and cars to fit those roads. Add a little more buffer and you get the width of modern highway lanes.
Careers aren’t all that different.
It’s simply more comfortable for systems when one person occupies one lane while many people work together. So we’ve built entire structures to funnel people into lanes and encourage them to choose early and stay put. Even if the conveyance options are difference, even if the end goals are significantly farther than ever before… same lanes, same rules. The highway just works better when you stay in your lane.
Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way.
Most of our lives get constructed as a series of “or” choices. If you’re reasonably capable and motivated, that approach can put you in a perfectly respectable lane. But as I’ve gotten older, and especially in a dawning age that increasingly rewards synthesis, I’ve come to believe something else.
& is actually the point.
Not “and” as in chaos.
“And” as in refusing to amputate parts of yourself just because they don’t fit neatly into a prescribed lane that may or may not match the world anymore.
Most of the best work I’ve done has come from changing lanes. Back and forth. Sometimes politely. Sometimes awkwardly. Sometimes riding the dashed line and gobbling it up like Pac-Man, which I’m sure looked irresponsible from certain mirrors.
The point isn’t “be everything.”
The point is “know the thing you’re actually being.” (Cliff’s note: It’s your authentic self).
For me, that thing has always been some version of creating a sense of place and a simple, navigable path through complexity, wherever it is.
Sometimes that’s a physical environment.
Sometimes it’s a business.
Sometimes it’s a painting.
Sometimes it’s a long run into the mountains.
Sometimes it’s writing.
Sometimes it’s just an idea, like this one.
If you’ve been told to narrow yourself down, I’ll offer a different question:
What are you being asked to cut off that might actually be part of your advantage?
As we head into the new year, my hope is that you experiment with offering yourself a little more fully to your work rather than buying into the illusion that staying in traffic is the same thing as progress.