1/ "What's the best career advice you've ever received?"

The best advice I received was paradoxically the worst advice! But it made me realize something important.

It was my 4th year at Amazon, when a career mentor told me that everyone wants just two things from their job:

2/ Making a lot of money, and making a big impact in the world.

3/ My mentor assured me that if I kept it up, I will almost certainly achieve both, and if I worked really hard I will likely contribute to something that might even be remembered forever — maybe even have my own Wikipedia page!

4/ So the best way to determine what I should focus on was to ask myself: What would I want my Wikipedia page to say? What would I want to be remembered for?

That perspective sounded very inspiring at first, but something clicked in me after a few hours.

5/ As I was thinking about what I wanted to be remembered for, I suddenly wondered: Why do I even want to be remembered?

Was it worth sacrificing a good part of my life for the possibility of leaving a legacy? That made me realize that I'd rather not.

6/ I'd rather be forgotten, but able to choose what I work on, call my own shots, work on my own terms, choose how much to work, and so on.

That's when I realized that I would never be able to have any of those things as a full-time employee. The rest, is now history.