The Resume Trap
When the future feels uncertain, people default to resume optimization. Pick the job that leads to the next job. Get the credential that unlocks the next credential. Go to grad school. Get a consulting gig.
Peter Thiel calls this living in a branching tree diagram. You never actually do what you want. You just keep making moves that look good on paper.
"You pick a job that will be good on your resume because it will lead to a different job later on. You never really do something you want to do."
Three Horizons
Thiel breaks career decisions into three time horizons. Short-term: will you be happy? Will you learn? Medium-term: how does it look on your resume? Long-term: is it meaningful?
Most people pour everything into the medium-term. They sacrifice happiness now and meaning later, all for a resume line that might help them get the next resume line.
"We are in a skewed world where we overweight the medium-term and underweight the short-term and the long-term."
The Recalibration
Thiel's fix is simple. Forget the medium-term entirely. Focus on some combination of short-term and long-term.
Do something that makes you happy today AND matters in twenty years. The resume will take care of itself. Or it won't. Either way, you'll have built something real instead of a paper trail.
"I would recalibrate to focus on the short-term and long-term, and forget about the medium-term."