A good question to ask yourself is "what would happen this year if you were both the luckiest and best person in the world at what you do" A friend asked me this and it hit, cause as much as i like my private equity job, well, even if i originate a deal myself, work twice as much as my colleagues, and it ends up making my fund $20M, well my total comp for the year will just be +$50k Sure it's not bad and i'm already extremely lucky with what i earn etc, but when you're a really ambitious guy there is sth mentally draining about knowing that even if you're insanely good, get insanely lucky and basically everything goes your way, nothing THAT crazy can actually happen to you Cause you can't dream. You don't really have this little thing in the back of your head going "what if this year?" "what if this week?" "what if this goes well?" It's why i just love this twitter game. I can spend 30 mins writing sth, worst case it gets 8 likes and i forget about it, but there is always this tiny chance i wake up and it did 2m views, some random insane person dm'd me, i meet someone interesting, get pulled into a business opportunity, whatever And then i can just take another shot tomorrow. then another one the day after Not saying everyone should become a founder / creator either, obviously the reason jobs like mine are so good is you get a pretty absurd floor and barely any downside But increasingly think very ambitious people need at least one thing in their life where, if they get exceptionally good + exceptionally lucky, something genuinely disproportionate can happen to them