How to care less?
I know this may seem like an obvious answer but I’d like to hear from those who were once / are in a similar boat. I feel like I’ve put so much into this career and the output isn’t really there. The difference in mid / top bonus really isn’t worth the effort in my opinion.
I take pride in my work and like to do a good job but at this point would really like to detach a bit mentally. Not sure if I’m explaining this well enough but it’s kind of if you know you know.
For those who took your foot off the gas: do people notice? Bad reviews? Etc?
It’s not about caring less - it’s about caring about what matters. Want to stay at your firm long-term and make MD? You better grind just as hard whether the difference between top and bottom bucket is $5K or $50K. Have a buyside gig lined up that you actually care about? Focus on your friends and family and slack off a bit while you can. Know you don’t want to be in this industry long but just want to make some cash while you can? Mid-bucket energy only while prioritizing what actually matters to you
It’s the latter of your three but obviously tough to find similar comp at senior associate level. Beginning to look into DL / PC.
Exactly what poster above said. Some people care a lot about shit, others don’t and life is a breeze for them. You can’t easily switch which type you are. If you’re the types that cares too much, all you can do is control the things you choose to care about. How you allocate it.
Stop caring about the fake shit. Stop caring about reviews. Stop caring about buckets and bonuses. Stop caring about perception, looking like a hard worker, getting promotions, what your boss thinks of you, competing with other analysts, making your company money. Stop caring about what anybody else is doing or what anybody else thinks of what you’re doing. Stop caring about all the things that frankly have zero or negative return on your care invested.
Start caring about the real shit. Care about doing your work with excellence. Matter of fact, care about doing everything you do with excellence. Care about developing true mastery of your industry. Care about making yourself healthy and strong. Care about showing up for the the people in your life when they really need you - all of them. Care about showing up as the best version of yourself every day, even when you don’t feel like it. Care about building yourself and others up every single day. Care about never tearing others down. Care about blocking time on the calendar for the things you love and that bring you joy.
Many of us need to accept that we spend too much time caring about the “outputs” in life which we never control and never will, but not enough time caring about the “inputs” in life which are always 100% in our control, even right this moment. For what it’s worth, once I completely stopped caring about the reviews and bonuses and perceptions, and instead focused 100% on mastering and enjoying the job, I had more fun, was happier, and went from dead middle bucket to top.
“How you do anything is how you do everything.”
Ultimately, if you are a type of person that cares, it is difficult to stop caring. The only thing you can change is what you care for.
When I started - I would go crazy about every little thing - for first 8 months, I did not take a single day off even when my nephews came to visit me in London for a week. They spent all the days on their own (except a few hours on the weekend) - thankfully they were quite responsible teenagers and only once I had to organise taxi for them.
Anyway - any job could be done with 20/80 rule as not every single element will matter that much, and there are things I would prioritize more than when I started. I do not think you immediately get bad reviews, as long as you know what to prioritise which is supper difficult as I found much more MDs who are super disorgansied and unsure about their own priorities than those that would actually execute and prioritise with sense...
You should be with an employer that appreciate and awards your hard work or value, or your bank account should at least reflect it
I agree but these places are basically all the same and very group dependent.
couple points:
1. The way we kind of view stuff is about getting somewhere not want are we going to do when we get there. People always talk about dreams, such as, I want to play in the NFL, or I want to be a lawyer; but no one ever dreams/talks about how it will be once they get there. That almost has to be a new dream or a new approach. Okay, I made it to investment banking, now what?
2. This happens in every profession. I'd say banking is similar to profession golf in a way (In a sense, people think they know what it is when actually they don't). Point is, everyone starts in banking wanting to work on big deals at GS, but sometimes you end up at Nomura on low level deals. Kind of like every pro golfer wants to be sponsored by a big name brand and win the Masters a bunch of times, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. Some guys stay on tour a couple years and go on to do other things, some guys are journeyman, some guys make it their career. Just like banking. At the end of the day though, it doesn't really matter. When you retire, hopefully you end up somewhere nice, or even out in the world, no one cares. Not saying phone in your job, but sometimes it doesn't need to be extreme live or death.
3. The key is probably to think about your life in reverse. Meaning, now trying to be grim, but think about your funeral. It's okay to think about how you want people to view you, but do you want people to say you worked hard, or you always had time for people. Then kind of work it back, do you want a family, do you want to spend time with them or just see them on vacations; do you want to make a lot of money and be stressed or live a simple life? Once you figure that out you can figure out how much you need to or dont need to care.
I agree with a lot of the points made above.
I try to remind myself everyday to focus on the effort and improve my thinking and work and be less attached to outcomes.
Ofcourse if you fuck up or things didn't go optimally because a different approach to something would have worked better, you should learn from it.
But in many situations there are so many variables out of your control that impact a certain outcome that you have to accept that you can't do more across a certain point.
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