Thought Experiment: What are your three sentences?

Depending on your age, think back to an experience from about a decade ago… Perhaps it’s high school, college, a first job, or grad school. These were all very important periods in your life, and at the time, my guess is that you were stressing about every little detail regarding your experience while you were there – which party to go to, what are the best classes to take, what meetings to attend, what projects to work on, what club to join…

Now imagine yourself in the present, meeting somebody new and potentially important to you over a cup of coffee – it could be a colleague from work or a parent of your kid’s best friend. You will likely spend the first 5-10 minutes giving each other a quick overview of your background – where you grew up, where you went to school, quick rundown of your work experience, and so on…

How long do you think you’ll get to spend talking about your decade-old experiences with this person [1] ?

At best, you’ll summarize them in no more than three points. For example, when I think back to my college days at the University of Minnesota, it’s summarized into (i) I was recruited to play tennis for the Gophers, (ii) I ended up getting a dual degree in Finance and Communications, and (iii) I met my future wife at a tennis team’s annual dinner party.

Even if I wanted to share more information about my rich and dense college experiences with this new person I just met, he or she most likely wouldn’t care to listen to it. To illustrate this point, imagine if you grabbed a coffee with one of your coworkers and all of a sudden, they started a long monologue about their college days without you asking them for it. You’d probably listen politely for a bit, but my guess is you’d also get bored very quickly and after a while, get annoyed and start questioning their judgment.

Just like you’re not very interested in long versions of most other people’s stories, most people aren’t very interested in a long version of your story either. Not because they’re rude or because they don’t care about you, but because if you spent more than a few sentences describing each major life experience , a person wouldn’t get a chance to say a word back to you for at least 10-15 minutes. Everyday conversations aren’t TED Talks or autobiography interviews on a major news channel, and it’s very helpful to notice how much you remember (or care to listen) about others to realize how much people will remember (or care to listen) about you.

Why does this perspective matter? It matters because it helps you see the bigger picture.

Those four years in college, two years in grad school, X number of years in a particular job… they will all become just 2-3 sentences in your life story one day. If you don’t believe me, you can easily test this – just think about how quickly you skip through the first 20 years of your life when you introduce yourself to new people these days.

So, ask yourself – what do you want those three sentences to be? Everything else that won’t materially impact the content or nature of those three sentences probably doesn’t matter all that much in the long run.

I hope this helps you alleviate some unnecessary stress in the present, as nobody will remember that silly comment you made in class or that one assignment at work you didn’t get quite right.[2]

In other words, whenever you feel anxious or overwhelmed in your daily life, just remember that 10 years from now, you’ll be summarizing this current experience in no more than three sentences, because that’s all the memory that’s likely going to be left of it [3] and that people will give you room to share with them.

Notice the concept in real life:

• How do you introduce yourself to people today?
• How much do you know about your parent’s second job?
• How much do you know about your best friend’s high school or college experience (assuming you didn’t go to the same place)?
• How much do you know about your favorite professor’s background?
• How much do you know about your boss’ experience before you started working together?

Caveat:

This short essay is not to say that everyday details in life don’t matter, but that it’s important to put them into perspective and decide what’s really worth stressing about and for what reason (e.g. meeting an important deadline that may affect your reputation with your boss and thus career prospects within the company) vs. what may likely end up being a forever-lost memory over time (e.g. “needing” to get into a competitive elective class [4] that you believe will somehow make all the difference in your education).

[1] By the way, “this person” likely hasn’t shared those experiences with you, and that will be true for most people you’ll meet in life.

[2] Assuming that, in general, you produce high quality work and that your periodic “failures” are more of an outlier than a standard.

[3] In reality, you’ll probably have a few more personal memories that you typically won’t share with people around you, but will be important memories to you (e.g. stories from some fun parties you attended or meaningful experiences with your loved one).

[4] It’s funny to think about it, but in all honesty, I couldn’t easily tell you the names of all the [at-the-time “seriously important”] elective classes I took during my MBA program without looking them up, even though I graduated only six years ago.