Settling

Settling Down vs Refusing to Settle:

Ever since graduating, we’ve been split off from our engineering peers and are on our own paths. For the longest time, as long as we passed our classes, we would achieve the same end result as our peers (+- some GPA points). Now, in the real world, we’re faced with a real challenge in both our career and our lives. When do you settle down? How do you decide that it is an appropriate time to slow down your career and enjoy your life. I often am faced with this problem myself when I am glorifying the feeling of working long hours ‘for the hustle’. I don’t want to be a workaholic. But at the same time, I do not want to look back on the past 5/10 years of my life and feel as if I fell behind in the rat race. The opposite is also true. In university, I skipped most of my classes stating that “I don’t want to remember my degree sitting in a classroom”. So why have I now settled for the view of my cubicle walls when I should be living life instead?

We’ve all seen some form of the image below: 

I very much want to live my best life in my 20s. Do everything flat-out. YOLO. But at the same time, we always need to be thinking of the future, and what life we have left. Now that we’re working professionals, we have to make the decision whether to live for the moment or plan for the future. At work, how do you decide whether it’s worth it to take that extra assignment to get ahead, or rather go home and enjoy your free time/energy while you still have it. How do you decide whether it’s worth it to settle for what you’ve got, or if you should be striving for more. What is your risk tolerance when looking for a change to improve your personal or professional life? 

This is an open-ended topic and for the meeting I’d like everyone to think about what they priorities/values are when they decide to settle or not. Please join us for discussion at 6:30AM on Wednesday July 31st at OEB in 5AP.