Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can't Have Both (#1)

Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can't Have Both (#1)

Managers should be definite optimists. Makers should be indefinite optimists. You are a maker, Josh.

Introduction

I picked up Peter Thiel’s Zero to One to learn how to build a monopoly. I got stuck on this section on the importance of being a definite optimist, someone who has a clear vision of a brighter future.

My future has always been indefinite, which gave me options. I would have never found my calling or built a successful small business if I had tried to definitively map it out. You need an indefinite future when you are young to explore and discover your purpose.

Definite Optimist	Indefinite Optimist
Clear Vision You know what the future will look like and how to get there.	Cloudy Vision You have no idea what the future will look like.
Optimistic Outlook Tomorrow will be better than today.	Optimistic Outlook Tomorrow will be better than today.
Hires Engineers If you know how the future looks, you hire engineers to help you build it.	Hires Bankers and Lawyers If you believe the future will be brighter, but not sure how, you need to hire people who can help you protect your wealth.

Definite v. Indefinite Optimist

If my high school guidance counselor were here he’d be tugging at the few strands of hair he had left after asking me the same question for 25 years, “What do you want to do with your life?” I have never understood myself very well. My calling continues to elude me, even at 38, but I do know more than I did in high school. I know I am a teacher who hates authority, a family-man who preaches personal freedom, and a student who avoids school. Optimism suits my character, definitiveness does not.

"It must be terrible for a teenager to have a clear vision of their future. They will never know the gift of ignorance."

It must be terrible for a teenager to have a clear vision of their future. They will never know the gift of ignorance. Steve Jobs talked about it when in college he wandered into a calligraphy class for no good reason. It would later play a role in his clean and minimal aesthetic. Darwin signed up to be a naturalist for a three-year voyage around the world without ever stepping foot outside of England. He only felt the call to strike out on his own. These are the stories that connect to something in my bones. They inspire me.

But both men pivoted. Jobs built Apple and Darwin the Theory of Evolution. Jobs focused on marketing and user-experience. He had a definitive long-term plan. Darwin returned from his voyage with some ideas, but he spent eight years studying barnacles to accumulate the necessary data to propose and solidify his groundbreaking work. They were indefinite optimists in youth, definite optimists in adulthood.

The point is that you have to fluctuate between the two, Josh. You have become a definite optimist when it comes to the TOEFL® test and TST Prep. Still, now it is time to pivot back to indefinite optimism. You will learn Japanese and become a Youtuber (maybe a writer if you can get better at it). You have an idea of where you want to go, but it is far from definite, and that is okay. It is necessary to be an indefinite optimist when you are a maker. Creative endeavors require freedom.

Going back to the title, “Build an Empire or Find Your Calling: You Can’t Have Both,” if you are a manager by heart, if it feels like a calling to create and manage a large organization then you can indeed have both. I have met many managers and few have considered it a calling; I certainly do not.

You Are a Biotech Startup

Thiel illustrates my point quite nicely when he compares a biotech startup to a software startup, the former symbolizing an indefinite future and the latter a definite one. He uses these startups to exemplify the power of a definitive future. I will use the same example to remind myself that I am a human being, a biotech company. I am not a top-down engineered product but a bottom-up organism. My very nature is aligned with indefinite optimism.

"My very nature is aligned with indefinite optimism."

Biotech Startup	Software Startup
- uncontrollable organism	- perfectly determinate code
- poorly understood	- well understood
- natural	- artificial