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Peter Thiel Says Your Resume Is Ruining Your Life

By Peter Thiel · Mindset & Career · 1 min read

You pick a job that's good on your resume, which leads to a different job later. You see your career as a branching tree diagram where you never really do something that you want to do. Thiel says forget the medium-term entirely.

Key Points

People optimize for medium-term resume value instead of happiness or meaning
Three horizons: short-term (happiness/learning), medium-term (resume), long-term (importance)
We overweight the medium-term — recalibrate to short-term and long-term, forget the middle

I would recalibrate to focus on some combination of short-term and long-term, and forget about the medium term.

The Branching Tree Where You Never Do What You Want

Thiel: When you think of the future as indefinite, you pick a job that you think will be good on your resume because it will lead to a different job later on. There's even a credentialing version — you go to grad school, you get a consulting job.

You think of it as this branching tree diagram where you never really do something that you want to do.

A branching tree diagram where you never really do something that you want to do.

Three Horizons

Thiel: Think of the future on three horizons. Short-term: are you going to be happy? Will you be learning a lot? Medium-term: how good is it on your resume? Long-term: are you working on something important or meaningful?

We are in a skewed world where we overweight the medium-term and underweight some combination of the short-term and the long-term.

Short-term: happiness and learning. Medium-term: resume. Long-term: something important.

Forget the Medium-Term

Thiel: I would recalibrate it to focus on some combination of short-term and long-term, and forget about the medium-term.

Forget the medium-term. Focus on happiness now and importance long-term.