Are you successful? How can you tell? Asking for a friend.

OK, you got me, I wasn’t actually asking for a “friend”. It’s 2020s, and I’m approaching a decade since I started working in a professional setup. Through this period, I have asked this question to myself more often than I’d like.

The first few times this question came up, the answers were simple and straightforward. If I got promoted a bunch of times or if I made ‘X’ times my current salary in the next couple years I’d be successful.

1-2 years later, the above ‘conditions’ for my definition of success were met. I asked myself, are you successful? The answer was no. Why? Because I was not working on the coolest, most important project at the time.

Luckily for me, over the next 12 months, I got the opportunity to work on the most difficult project we had attempted. It was a high risk, high reward situation. This was the kind of work that everyone in the org talks about.

I asked myself, are you successful? The answer I got was no. Why? While I was working on this ‘cool’ project, my peers were converting and leading big teams which generated a lot of revenue.

Luckily for me (again?) in a couple of years, I found myself leading one of these projects which generated substantial revenue and had a big team.

I ask myself, are you successful now? The answer I got was no. This time I didn’t ponder on the ‘Why’. Because there was obviously an issue with this line of questioning.

Success, I realised, was a moving target. Every time you get to where you wanted to be, there is somewhere else you want to go next.

The things I counted to measure my success – promotions, salary hikes, etc – it could have all been luck(notice how many times I said ‘luckily’ before?). How do I know for sure if I contributed to any of this? Reading the book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ strengthened this argument more.

“How do I know for sure if I contributed to any of this?” That was the question that I needed to answer for myself. This line of questioning started giving me better questions. Some of them are below.

Have my decisions gotten better over time? Have my technical abilities increased? Can I write more efficient code? Am I learning something new? Do people like working with me? Can I easily communicate complex ideas? Can I control the energy of the meeting I am in? Can I negotiate better? How consistently am I performing in these aspects?

The underlying theme was of growth. Growing my aptitude and abilities is in my hands. The role of luck can be discounted when I do these things in a better way, consistently, over time.

So the questions should be – Are you growing? How can you tell? Ask yourself everyday.