Tyranny of Optionality

A few weeks back, I came across a Harvard study from 2010 on X that made me stop scrolling. Researchers pinged thousands of people randomly throughout their days, asking: “How are you feeling right now?” and “What are you thinking about?”

The result was clear: when your mind wanders, you’re less happy. Even if you’re doing something boring, you’re actually happier focusing on the boring thing than letting your brain drift somewhere else.

The finding immediately took me to the career and guidance conversations I’ve been having with friends and folks from tech over the last few months. This feeling of not being able to mentally commit to a path is all too common here in tech. There’s way too much optionality, and if you’re even a little higher potential than the rest, you’re swimming in the feeling of constantly second-guessing yourself. This leads to a painful life. Let’s understand it better.

This is a serious problem. It has hampered many talented folks from being truly functional even in their current roles or whatever they’re doing at the moment. You’re mentally chasing better, and you’re not giving your 100% to the present. This is true for life and career both. Have a great house? How about an even greater house? Have a nice car? How about the bigger car you could buy if you unlock your career at that high-growth startup compared to the stable company you’re at now?

That study was from 2010. Back then, you couldn’t scroll Instagram Stories during meetings. The word ‘founder’ wasn’t plastered all over LinkedIn by anyone with a MacBook. You actually had to live where your job was. Startups weren’t so prevalent, smartphones were just coming about, and the problem wasn’t as severe as it surely is today.

There’s a much worse atmosphere of comparison now - a mad-max race to get rich early, and the internet is lathered with stories that fuel this mentality. This has led to the proliferation of this problem a lot more than what those researchers probably anticipated.

We’ve since built a world designed to keep your mind wandering constantly about career possibilities.

Walk into any tech office today and you see it everywhere. Someone scrolling LinkedIn, seeing a promotion announcement, then spending twenty minutes mentally spiraling about their career trajectory. An engineer browsing a startup’s engineering blog and suddenly feeling restless about their current company. A designer discovering someone’s career pivot on Twitter and questioning whether they’re maximizing their potential. The rabbit hole that starts with “just checking” salary data and ends with calculating what you could be making elsewhere.

This isn’t career ambition. This is the specific torture of having high potential.

When you’re capable and ambitious, your current job becomes just one choice among infinite possibilities. You’re lucky to have options, but that luck creates a particular type of suffering. You can’t be grateful for a good role because your mind constantly calculates whether it’s the optimal use of your abilities.

Every day at your current company feels like time not spent elsewhere. Every project gets measured against what you could be building somewhere else. Every meeting becomes an opportunity cost calculation.

The cruel irony is that the very trait that makes you valuable - awareness of what’s possible - makes you incapable of enjoying what you have.

You’re never mentally where you physically are. You’re a designer at a solid company, but your mind lives in an alternate timeline where you’re running design at some AI startup. Or you’re an engineer building good products, but you’re mentally calculating whether you should be at that unicorn with better equity. Or you’re in a senior role, but you’re wondering if this is the time to finally start that company.

You build elaborate career fantasies. The startup founder arc with its equity windfall and industry recognition. The big tech trajectory with its comp packages and early retirement math. The consultancy escape plan where you finally control your time. Each one sounds reasonable, achievable, and better than what you have.

You can’t savor the interesting problems you’re solving now because you’re mentally working on problems that would “actually matter.” You can’t appreciate the team you’re building with because you’re mentally building a team you’d actually want to lead. You can’t enjoy the salary you earn because you’re mentally already making what you “should” be making.

But the trap: you’re mentally living in these alternate career timelines, which makes your current path taste like nothing.

This is worse than normal career ambition. Usually you get promoted, feel satisfied briefly, then want the next promotion. But when you have high potential, you’re not climbing a ladder - you’re living in completely fictional timelines where everything aligns perfectly.

“I’m a VP at this startup, but I could easily crack director level at Microsoft - wouldn’t that be nice?” “I’m L6 at Google, but I could be senior leadership at that Series C startup.” “I’m doing well here, but imagine the equity upside if I joined that unicorn before their next round.” “This role is fine, but what if I actually started something of my own?”

None of this is happening. You’re working at some perfectly decent company, but your mind inhabits an elaborate fantasy requiring fifty career moves to go right in exact sequence.

Meanwhile, your actual career becomes background noise. Those genuinely interesting technical challenges? Boring, because they don’t advance your imaginary trajectory. The solid team you work with? Temporary, since you’re mentally already elsewhere. Your decent compensation? Insufficient when measured against fantasy earnings at fantasy companies.

The research from that 2010 study has definitely gotten much worse. We’ve weaponized human imagination specifically against career satisfaction. Every day brings new reminders of paths not taken, opportunities not seized, potential not maximized. The internet constantly serves up stories of 25-year-olds selling companies for millions, crypto millionaires, and overnight success stories that make your steady career progress feel inadequate.

The deepest problem: imagination itself has a cost. All that mental energy spent constructing alternate career realities is energy not spent engaging with your actual career reality. The quest for the optimal career path never ends because there’s always another option, another possibility, another “what if.”

Meanwhile, your career continues as you continue to worry without committing to a path. The real challenge isn’t finding the perfect career situation - it’s committing to what you have in the face of infinite career options. Putting your foot down when you have a good role and saying: this is good, this is where I want to be, I’m going to make this work and enjoy building something here.

There’s a scene in Passengers where an android bartender tells the protagonist, trapped on a malfunctioning spaceship: “You are exactly where you were meant to be. Live a little.”

The line resonates because the character’s circumstances aren’t perfect. He’s not being told his situation is optimal. He’s being told to stop mentally living in alternate realities and actually inhabit his actual life. For high-potential people, this means stopping the mental career wandering and actually committing to building something meaningful where you are. The bartender isn’t promising a perfect situation - he’s promising that presence and commitment to your current reality, even an imperfect one, is where satisfaction lives.

The excruciating tension for high-potential people is that ambition requires seeing possibilities, but contentment requires committing to your current path. These two things directly conflict. Your ability to envision better career options - the very thing that makes you valuable - also makes it impossible to be satisfied with the career option you’ve chosen.

You’re terrible at probabilistic thinking when it comes to careers. The alternate career paths you imagine always feel like they’ll deliver higher percentages of satisfaction than they actually would. Meanwhile, you have one career reality that could definitely deliver satisfaction right now, and you’re ignoring it completely because you’re mentally somewhere else.

Every moment you spend mentally working at a different company is measurable unhappiness with the company you actually work for. Every fantasy career timeline steals satisfaction from the career you’re actually building.

The research is clear: presence beats possibility. Being fully engaged in your current role produces more happiness than mentally time-traveling to alternative careers that probably won’t unfold the way you imagine anyway.

This isn’t about lowering your ambition or settling for less. This is about recognizing that your mind’s constant residence in imaginary career futures is making it impossible to build something meaningful in your actual career present.

When you’re always mentally elsewhere, evaluating other options, you never fully invest in making your current situation genuinely fulfilling. You can’t build deep relationships with your team because you’re always one foot out the door. You can’t get absorbed in interesting problems because you’re measuring them against imaginary problems elsewhere. You can’t develop real expertise because you’re not committed enough to go deep.

The absence of commitment makes satisfaction impossible. You can’t enjoy what you’re not fully present for. The research is clear that presence generates happiness, but high-potential people struggle with presence because they’re always aware of alternatives. The very capability that gives you options also prevents you from committing deeply enough to any single option to extract real satisfaction from it.

The imaginary career future you’re living in always appears more fulfilling than any career future you’ll actually experience. Your startup founder fantasy excludes the loneliness of solo decision-making and the stress of irregular income. Your big tech dream omits the bureaucracy and the feeling that your work doesn’t really matter. Your “once I make it” scenario never includes the new problems that career success creates.

We’re terrible at probabilistic thinking about careers, but we’re especially bad at understanding this: the ability to commit to your current career path, even when you can see other possibilities, is what allows you to build something genuinely satisfying. The constant evaluation of alternatives prevents you from going deep enough in any direction to create real meaning.

What no one tells high-potential people: your capability is both a gift and a burden. You’re lucky to have options, but that optionality creates a specific type of suffering. You can’t “be grateful” because your mind won’t let you. It’s always showing you what else is possible.

But the present moment is the only place where career satisfaction actually exists. Not in imaginary futures where you’re doing different work. Not in alternative timelines where you made different choices. Right here, right now, in whatever role you’re actually building.

You are exactly where you were meant to be professionally. The tyranny of career optionality never ends, but your ability to commit to your current path and build something meaningful there can begin anytime.

This is genuinely difficult. It’s hard to ignore career options when you can see every possible path. It’s hard to commit to your current role when your mind is trained to optimize and platforms keep surfacing what could be better. It’s hard to find satisfaction in your current trajectory when entire industries profit from your career dissatisfaction.

But career happiness lives in committing to what’s real, what you’re actually building, what you can actually control and improve right now.

If you’re high potential and have done well for yourself, you can afford to enjoy where you are and what you’ve earned.