Fame/Fortune/Freedom (3Fs)

Many of my Saturday-consultation-slots get booked by requests for career guidance/mentoring/mid-career-transitions, apart from the usual topics related Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML). Right from college students, all the way up to seasoned professionals.

After many such sessions, seeing that, in any opportunity/position/role, you can typically chose only 2 amongst the 3 Fs, ie. out of Fame, Fortune and Freedom. Only one of them can be chosen strongly, the second one, rather weakly and the third one gets chosen automatically, no choice there.

Another observation: the strong ‘F’ varies based on the stage of career you are in. Seeing (or, rather, even suggesting) roughly 3 such stages in one’s processional life, say of 10–12* years each:

• Building (‘Fame’): working hard (18 hrs/day??!!), heads down, either horizontal (generalist) or vertical (specialist) or ideally ‘T’ kind of expertise, aim is to build mastery, thereby, a good reputation, the ‘Fame’.
• Leveraging (‘Fortune’): reaping benefits of the mastery, typically in a leadership/managerial role, handling big positions/accounts and there by, basically making money, the ‘Fortune’.
• Giving (‘Freedom’): With the expertise and money under the belt, give that knowledge to others and also, you can now afford to be free to build on your own ideas, the ‘Freedom’.

This, of-course is a very idealized, linear version of a career plan and am aware that the career may take quite a bit of twists-n-turns as many things are external to our sphere of influence. But still, having some rough plan/stages in mind, helps, especially at the decision making cross-roads.

Feel free to comment with your agreement/disagreement.

*your mileage may vary

Originally published at LinkedIn