A common pattern I’ve observed is that people find themselves stuck in careers they don’t really like because what they are doing feels high status.

The college professor who thinks their academic field contributes little to society and earns a pittance teaching it but feels they would be a failure if they did something else. The musician who doesn’t enjoy their instrument and struggles to get work. The aspiring Olympian who spends much of their life in pain and is unlikely to medal. The banker who feels bad about the morality of their work and gets too little sleep. The urban professional who suffers a low quality of life living in an expensive city and wishes they could live where they grew up.

In each of these cases, the person is in some way “high status” and they are reluctant to give up that status, even if they don’t enjoy the life that gives them that status, or feel that they aren’t contributing much to society.

I think there are several ways this can happen. One is that there are many points in life at which we make choices about what to dedicate time to (e.g. choosing a college major) and it’s tempting to do the thing people say you are good at, or that you’ve already invested time in, even if there is little societal value or long term happiness likely to come from it.

Another thing is that people often have a narrow view of what is high status based on who they interact with. If you are an athlete/professor/banker, then you mostly hang out with people who think the highest status people are athletes/professors/bankers, and dedicating your life to something else makes you seem like a failure who couldn’t cut it as an athlete/professor/banker.

So what’s the solution to this? I think most people would be happier if they paid less attention to whether what they were doing was “high status” or more attention to whether what they are doing with their lives makes the world better, both for others and for themselves. I think this would also be much better for the world.

This is of course more easily said than done.