If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

Let’s say you are in a bad marriage. Not a violent marriage, per se, but…well, it sucks. You’re always arguing, and it’s not nice.

You have three options:

1. You can get a divorce

2. You can fix the marriage

Most people choose door number 3:

3. You can stay in the bad marriage, and be miserable.

I’ve had variations of this conversation with many people in my life. Not just in bad marriages, but bad jobs, bad substance abuse problems, bad whatever. Fixing the problem requires action. But nobody wants to take action, out of laziness, inertia, or something else; they would rather sit in the problem and stew. The marriage thing in particular. I am very much in favor of ending bad relationships, relationships that are not fixable. I think a good faith effort should be made to fix the relationship, but if it turns out to be intractable, then pack a bag and head off to the Hampton Inn.

This is a variation on a piece I wrote about two years ago, called “Sick People Want To Stay Sick,” which talked about the mental health aspect of this phenomenon. Eventually, you get to the point where you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. But let’s visit a more common problem—you’re in a job you don’t like, and you’re underpaid. Do you:

1. Stay in the job and hope they recognize your brilliance, or

2. Get another job

Most people stick with number one, and stay miserable, because looking for a job requires effort, and risk. This is the position I was in at Lehman Brothers from 2007-2008. I didn’t get a promotion I thought I deserved, I had a resentment about it, and I was pissed. Now, I actually did take some action—I went upstairs to the bond floor and inquired about a job trading treasury bonds, but when that didn’t pan out, I went back to being miserable trading ETFs. The reality is that I could have gotten a job at another firm making twice as much without breaking a sweat, if I put my mind to it. But I was nostalgic about Lehman, I was thankful that they hired me in the first place, and I liked the people I worked with, so I stayed put. It ended up not mattering in the long run, anyway.

But yes, from a professional standpoint, if you are less than satisfied at your current endeavor, then—do something else! This is hard for the Wall Street folks, because it is hard to replicate that income in a different line of work. You can’t make $350,000 being a teacher. But maybe you get to the point that you don’t care, or maybe you have a high-earning spouse, or maybe you have had enough. Or maybe you want to open a bar, or a restaurant, or a strip club. Maybe you want to invest in real estate. Maybe you want to be an angel investor in tech companies. Maybe a lot of things. My question to you is: what the fuck are you doing? Every day you wait to pursue your dream, every day you spend miserable in that job, is one day closer to death. Nothing down that path but regret.

I still work hard, but nowhere near as hard as I used to. I started to slow down when I hit 50, the gravitational pull of old age being what it is. But I manifest things. I am working on starting an ETF, for starters. I am building up my Jared Dillian Money business. I am still managing money. And I DJ all over the place, and teach school, and do other stuff. Rick Rieder is being considered for the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Rick Rieder works harder than I do. But it’s not a function of work. It’s a function of making decisions. You make the decision that you are going to end a bad marriage. You make the decision that you are going to change careers. You make the decision that you are going to move into a nicer neighborhood. What we are, is the sum total of all the decisions we have made in our lives, good and bad. The successful, happy people have made good decisions. The unsuccessful, unhappy people have made bad decisions. The bad decisions, by the way, are usually fixable with time and effort. There aren’t too many bad decisions that you can’t come back from (but there are some).

If nothing changes, nothing changes. If you are unhappy in some aspect of your life, I can tell you a surefire way that you are going to remain unhappy—by doing nothing! And doing nothing is so easy—everyone has a status quo bias. Call it inertia, call it whatever you want. The status quo is comfortable, it’s familiar, but remember, happy people spend as much time out of their comfort zone as possible. Ah yes, the comfort zone. I am in the comfort zone right now, watching the Marlins play the Tigers and sitting on the couch, writing an essay, which is something that I do approximately once a week. Going outside of my comfort zone would be to work on this novel that I have been working on, which I did work on yesterday, but the progress has been painfully slow, because I don’t want to spend any time out of my comfort zone. This fucking novel. I really have no idea what I am doing, but I think the world is full of successful people who didn’t know what they were doing. They figured it out.

“Figure it out” are the three most powerful words in the English language. Now, I say that, but I am sort of a hypocrite, because if you gave me a broken car engine and a laptop with YouTube videos, I would not be able to figure it out. But I can figure out how to write a book, or trade a stock, or play music. Quick story: I just ordered two of the new CDJ-3000X players for my music studio. I got them in the mail, plugged them in, and one of them didn’t turn on. So I troubleshooted it. I tried different cables, I tried different outlets, I tried everything. It was a lemon. So I contacted Sweetwater, and they are sending me a new CDJ-3000X, and I have to send the old one back. I have to print out a UPS return label and affix it to the box and take it to the UPS store. None of this is hard. It is a pain in the ass, but it is not hard. You would be surprised how many people roll over and die when faced with a minor setback. You just…figure it out. Most people will figure it out—when they have to. If the AC goes out in your house in the middle of summer, you have to figure it out. Otherwise, you are going to be sweaty. Now, you could stay sweaty, but the solution is as simple as calling the HVAC company. Getting another job is another level of pain in the ass. You have to perfect your resume, you have to talk to headhunters, you have to exploit your network, you have to interview, you have to do all these things. A lot of emotional effort involved. This is why people stay in the job they hate and don’t do anything about it. If nothing changes, nothing changes. Figure it out. Do something about it. Faith without works is dead.

This is part of a larger discussion about action. Elon Musk does things. Jeff Bezos does things, or at least he did, until he retired. Etc. There are a lot of Wall Street managing directors who don’t do much of anything, and they get paid a lot of money. Great gig if you can get it. Take action, try new things, take risks, launch new products, don’t stand still—that’s all the advice I have for someone in your situation. No matter how good something is, it can be made better. Amazon has been operating under that philosophy for years. They could have been satisfied with three-day delivery, or two-day delivery, or one-day delivery. Now they are delivering in hours, and with drones, it might one day be instantaneous. Why innovate? You have 8 percent of all retail sales, the stock is at a $2 trillion valuation, there’s no evidence that same-day delivery is going to make your stock go up any more, so why do it? Because it is the right thing to do, because we can’t stand still. Keep doing what you always did, and you’re going to keep getting what you always got.

I know you can do it.