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#203 - Why Blisters Beat Bliss

Weeks before graduating from university, I remember feeling a mix of excited, nervous -- and drop-dead tired.

I was excited to be heading out into the "real world", nervous because I didn't know what it'd be like, and tired from the last four years of studying, and an...aggressively managed social calendar. 🙃

But the fatigue was also from the job search I'd just been through. In between studying, classes, intramural sports, and student government, I spent most of my final year focused on finding my first job.

Like most students, all I really knew how to do at the time was: study. But I had no clue how to play the career game. Navigating the charade of resumes, cover letters, internships, career fairs, information sessions, and interviews had left me drained. Dazed, and confused.
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But lucky for me the job market was strong, and I found myself with an offer from a bank in New York, a consulting firm in Boston, a startup in Texas, and a spot in a graduate school program.
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I bet on the startup. So after scooping up my diploma and saying bye to friends, I went home to New York, leased a silver Toyota Camry, packed up my stuff and shipped it all down to Austin, Texas.

The moment

I joined an enterprise software company called Trilogy. "Fast-growing" didn't do the place justice. On the day I onboarded -- along with 250 others -- the company went from 200 to 450 employees. Overnight. 😬

I was hired into a marketing role, but was immediately thrown into recruiting. We all were. Experienced or not, we were all asked to recruit students from our respective schools via career fairs, referral programs and on-site interviews.
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I remember being wowed by how much time, energy, and money we spent on hiring. But also, by how many calls were falling through, how much feedback was going into messy spreadsheets (if anywhere), and how many candidates were being ghosted.

That chaos wasn’t unique to Trilogy. But it felt so much like the chaos I’d just been swimming in months earlier; only now, from the other side of the table.

I remember the conference room I sat in when I first thought: "Why is it like this? How can it be so painful, and broken, for both sides? Who's winning here? "

I had no idea at the time. Much less, understanding of why they grabbed me the way they did. But those questions would drive the next two decades of my career. They still do.

It took me a long time to appreciate why they hooked me. It was a version of the pain that shaped my childhood: an amazing dad who struggled to find his footing in an adopted country whose career rules he never learned. Who didn't know how to play the game. The pain I started ruminating on at Trilogy wasn’t random. It was part of growing up.

Follow your blister

Back in issue #118, we explored American writer Joseph Campbell's famous phrase, "follow your bliss". I wrote about how the world had misinterpreted his line as “do whatever makes you happy".

That was never the message. To Campbell, the phrase was more profound; something closer to enthusiasm-as-compass: the thing you’d do without permission:

Last month, Shaan Puri and Sam Parr explored Campbell on their podcast, My First Million. Here, Shaan explains how follow your bliss is misinterpreted:

Then Shaan introduces Campbell's updated phrasing:

The blister is the problem you’re compelled to solve, the one you can’t help poking at, usually because it lives somewhere in or around your own pain.

Love your loop

The blister beckons you. It points you toward the problem. But the problem on its own isn't enough. To build a career around it, Puri later explains, you need something else:

You need a loop you can fall in love with.

The loop is the repeatable activity needed to solve the problem. It's the actual content of the work: the conversations, effort, motions, reps, and relationships you willingly engage in dozens of times a week, for years.

The blister tells you what you're compelled to solve. The loop tells you what the work of solving it will be like as you go.

When those two things align, you have something that transcends a job title or function: a compounding asset that you can take with you.

I didn’t know any of this language then. But looking back, the sequence makes sense:

It was my blister calling me at Trilogy. I felt pulled to the recruiting problem; alternately intrigued, curious, confused, fascinated -- but enthusiastic about -- all the pain I saw and felt around me, as a job seeker, and as someone hiring others.

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When I left Austin to drive to San Francisco and join a recruiting firm called Otec, I was following my blister. But at Otec, the loop clicked.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the experience of starting that job: the bet I made, the buddy's couch I crashed on, and the fact that I had no real awareness of what I was doing. Just a hunch that turned out to be good signal:

That was my loop clicking. The same activity that bored or drained people sitting next to me felt fun to me. Hard, but energizing.

I referred to it as convergent fit at the time: the feeling of not needing to edit yourself to thrive at something. You’re not adapting or performing or pushing against friction all day long. You can be you, doing work the world values.

The blister I stumbled onto at Trilogy guided me toward the problem to solve. Otec showed me that I'd enjoy the loop required to solve it. That pairing became then became my bet.

Where it compounds

After Otec, I kept betting on the same pairing inside companies. On the same blister and the same loop, just in different contexts.

At Google, Uber, and Netflix, the products, the corporate cultures, the countries, and the level of impact changed. But I kept attacking the same fundamental problem: the pain felt on both sides of the hiring equation.

The loop -- the day-to-day work I enjoyed -- repeated too: connecting with people, decoding business models and cultures, building trust, shaping narrative, influencing decisions, growing teams.

As I went, I chose environments where I felt that pairing would land: a team that needed a recruiter, or a startup that needed a hiring sprint, or a company that needed a region built, or a leader to make hiring scalable.

Once you know what pulls you and what energizes you, the question is where that pairing can best flourish.

That could be inside Google, or inside LinkedIn, or inside a startup, or inside a Fortune 500 company. It also might be a project, a side hustle, a new chapter, or something you build yourself.

But every time you choose a team, project, manager, function, company, culture, or container for your work, you bet. Every time you steer your time and attention somewhere, you bet.

Same blister, new loop

From the outside, TalentStories -- this blend of newsletter, consulting, community, coaching and courses -- looks like reinvention.
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It's not. It's remix: same blister, new loop.

A remix keeps the core of an original song. The same melody, but a new arrangement. Or the same beat, with different instruments. It's the same underlying pull, in a different form.

For me, the blister still applies with TalentStories: the two-sided pain of broken talent markets, broken career stories, and broken ways people and companies find each other.

“Reinvention”, by contrast, is too heavy. It makes change sound radical: burn the old thing down, become someone new. Most career change is less dramatic and more nuanced. You keep something, you change something, you recombine the parts.

Today, the muscles I use still apply: connection, narration, inclusion. Those have been going since grade school.

But the loop -- the content of my day-to-day work -- has changed.

In my corporate roles, the loop was leading teams, influencing leaders, decoding culture, building businesses, and setting up systems to scale companies.
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With TalentStories, I have no team. The loop is noticing, writing, teaching, coaching, and helping people make sense and meaning from their work.

What I’m learning to do, now, is run a new loop on a familiar base. To learn that loop and, over time, to compound it.

What you're actually betting on

​Last week I wrote that careers compound, either for you or on you. I argued that the way to keep up with external change is to make compounding bets.

But I didn’t say the obvious next thing: you can’t make compounding career bets if you don’t know what you’re betting on.

What you’re betting on is not a title, company, or five-year plan. You’re betting on a pairing: a problem that keeps pulling you, and a loop you can keep running.

You can keep both and change the context.

You can keep the blister and change the loop.

You can keep the loop and point it at a new blister.

Or you can walk away from both. Open a surf school, or start a bakery.

All these are bets. Some are bigger than others. But none require you to pretend you’re starting from scratch.

In the end, the asset is awareness, not loyalty. A strong blister-loop pairing compounds. So keep both, change one, or leave both. Just do it consciously.

Who wins here?

As a noob at Trilogy, three months into my first job, I looked around at the hiring chaos and asked, Who wins here?

I didn’t know what I'd stumbled into. I didn’t have the language. Just the instinct, really, to follow my curiosity.

I had no idea I'd go to Silicon Valley and find a loop that would carry me across companies, continents, and the next acts I couldn't see.

But now I have the language. And so do you.

What's your blister: the pain that won’t leave you alone?

What's your loop: the work that doesn’t feel like work?

Together, they guide our non-linear careers. 🧭

They guide the question I've learned to ask whether I'm deciding what to write, what to build, what to say yes to, or what to leave. Internal role, external job, passion project, side hustle, the question is the same:

What's the best bet I can make?

Thanks for reading and exploring with me -- and have a great end of the week! 🙏

Aki