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Study Hacks Blog

The Calculus of Remarkability

The Irrepressible Erez

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to return for the moment to my obsession with Erez Lieberman. As you might recall, Lieberman is a rising star in the science world. He’s currently a fellow at Harvard’s elite Society of Fellows and a visiting faculty member at Google. He was selected for the Tech Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list, his work has been featured on the front page of the The New York Times, and the NIH just gave him a $2.5 million New Innovators grant.

When Lieberman’s stint as a Harvard fellow is over, he’ll have his choice of academic positions.

In other words, Erez Lieberman is remarkable, and this makes him interesting to us — not just those of us who happen to be grad students or professors, but to anyone who is interested in my Career Craftsman philosophy, which posits that becoming so good they can’t ignore you is the foundation for building a working life you love.

With all this in mind, I thought it useful to dive deeper into Lieberman’s story and see what insights I could uncover…

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Interested in Lifestyle Design? Get a PhD.

David had his epiphany not long after hiking an erupting volcano in the Fimmvörðuháls pass of southern Iceland. (Pictured above.)

At the time, he was a masters student spending a semester working with a team of seismologists.

He was also trying to figure out what to do with his life.

“I came full-circle on this issue of building an exciting life,” he told me. “I ultimately rejected the low-cost, Internet-based cash-flow business model that Tim Ferriss and others advocate as the silver bullet.”

To understand what he meant, you must first understand that David loved his time in Iceland. He developed a close group of friends and “spent evenings socializing, partying, exploring, and weekends hiking.” He climbed volcanoes and bathed in hot springs. He got to work with world class researchers solving interesting problems in beautiful locations.

“It broke my heart to leave,” he said.

David realized that an academic path could offer the exotic travel and flexibility promoted by lifestyle design gurus such as Ferriss, while also providing a sense of engagement and intellectual stimulation that would be hard to match on one’s own.

So on returning to the States, he decided to continue into his school’s PhD program. His first step, true to his desire to create an interesting life, was to “apply to every fellowship under the sun.” He won an NSF award to research in Japan, where his work on earthquake prediction had suddenly taken on a renewed sense of importance.

“My long-term goals aren’t clear yet,” he told me.  “But I hope to place myself in a position where I can choose a nice place to live after the doctorate.  Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, New York, and California are all on the list.”

The Lessons of David

What interests me about David’s story is that it’s relevant to both my student and my career advice.

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Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Transform It: Why Following Your Passion is the Wrong Way to Find Occupational Happiness

Rethinking Plan B

A recent New York Times article opens with the story of Rona Economou, a young woman with a career saga that follows a familiar arc.

Rona was a lawyer at a large Manhattan law firm and worried that her job wasn’t her calling. After being laid off during the recession she realized that this was her “one chance” to follow her dreams. Inspired, she opened a Greek food stall in the Lower East Side’s Essex Street Market. She wanted to “indulge her passion, lead a healthier life, and downshift professionally.”

Almost every career blog and book on the planet would applaud Rona’s courageous decision.

She’s no longer so sure.

As the Times reports, Rona now works harder than she ever had as a lawyer. Six days a week she’s up at 5:30 am doing strenuous labor: “she hoists 20-pounds bag of flour, gets burned and occasionally slices open a finger.” Her one day off a week is dedicated to the administrative side of the business.

She makes much less money and has much less flexibility in her schedule. Something as simple as catching a cold can be a disaster: “I can’t afford to shut the shop down.”

Rona discovered that her dream job was not as dreamy as she had fantasized — and she’s not alone in recognizing this cold dose of reality. The Times article tells story after story of young people with similar experiences:

  • Mary Lee Herrington quit her $250,000-a-year law job to become a wedding planner. She exhausted herself working 17-hour days. When she crunched the numbers, she was making less than $2 an hour.
  • Charan Sachar ditched his software engineering job to sell teapots on Etsy. He was surprised to find that instead of leisurely days spent at the kiln, up to 70% of his time is now dedicated to administrative tasks.”He’s not only his own boss,” the Times notes, “he is his own accountant, sales director, marketing manager and shipping clerk.”
  • Jennifer Phelan left a marketing job to become a private pilates instructor. She found the 14-hour days to be physically exhausting. She has since returned to her old job.
  • And so on.

A Better Approach

After reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of a college friend who not that long ago was in situation similar to Rona Economou. He was a lawyer at a big firm in a big city, and he also felt that his life lacked a certain spark.

But instead of leaving the law to start from scratch, he leveraged his value as a highly-trained lawyer to take control of his career.

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The Career Craftsman Manifesto

On Foundational Philosophies In 2008, I introduced the Zen Valedictorian philosophy, which argued that it’s possible to lead a student life that’s successful and impressive … Read more