Unlocking Agency: Journey From Paycheck to Purpose

Congratulations to Chris Wong, the winner of the first OSV writing challenge

Unsplash: Alexander Mils

We recently wrapped up our first monthly writing challenge over at the OSV Discord.

The competition prompt was to “write a piece about an episode of Infinite Loops that has sparked your curiosity or shifted your perspective on a particular topic.”

Riffing off our episode with Venkatesh Rao (episode, deep-dive), competition winner Chris Wong chronicled his journey away from being a “Paycheck Person” and towards a meaningful life:

“I was a classic Paycheck Person: I had a high-paying, high-status job in Manhattan.  I was, as they say, living the dream.  

But since my identity was attached to my high-paying, high-status job, I clung to it.  I only considered jobs that would advance my career, and if any obstacle came up (layoffs or companies going bankrupt) I found another job in the industry as fast as I could.  Every decision was tied toward furthering my career.

My ego told me I could do anything, but in reality, I never took any risks and I never considered any moves that would affect my job.  

And I justified this mindset with rationality.  I was optimizing the amount of money that I made, isn’t that the point?  But rationality can’t tell you what the purpose of that money is.  It can’t tell you how to derive satisfaction out of getting that money.  Rationality can’t tell you how your life can be meaningful, and if you depend on rationality, your life will be meaningless.”

We loved how Chris’s piece married ideas with action, using his journey and experience to ground the concepts discussed in the episode.

The full piece, Unlocking Agency: Journey From Paycheck to Purpose, is available over at Chris’ website, linked here. Check it out!

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