When the Hourglass Breaks
On time, control, and the danger of living for later
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Who hasn’t heard this question? It has become a standard in interviews, annual reviews, therapy sessions, mentor chats, and late-night conversations with friends. It is also one that I find incredibly hard to answer.
I used to contemplate this question and its answers often. On the job hunt my senior year of college, the internal answer was usually “making X a year” while the answer in the interview was usually tailored for whoever was sitting across from me.
Other common internal answers were “elected to congress,” “have a net worth of Y,” and “be your boss.” Thankfully, I had just enough sense to say what they wanted to hear: “still working here, growing in my role,” or “helping the company expand.”
I have grown to detest it—not just because it is packed with fallacies including the notions that we have that much control and that we will be satisfied when some arbitrary life set-up is achieved—but because it warps the way we perceive time, self, and purpose.
Let’s start with the illusion of control.
As a society, we are obsessed with outcomes. We spend billions fine-tuning algorithms, collecting data, and building ever more sophisticated models to predict what comes next—black swans be damned. Consider The Economist’s 2016 review of fifteen years of IMF economic forecasts across 189 countries. Over that span, 220 recessions occurred. The IMF—home to some of the brightest economic minds on Earth—failed to predict a single one in its beginning-of-year forecasts—and managed to only call about half of them when they had six months of data already in hand. (Hat tip to Brian Klaas’s Fluke—one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.)
What I’m getting at is this: we have far less control over outcomes than we’d like to admit. And that’s a hard truth—especially for those of us who’ve enjoyed success. Our brains are wired to reject randomness (don’t believe me? Read Fluke, if you dare). We crave causality. It’s easier to believe in signs or rituals than to accept that something was a fluke. Ask any baseball player clinging to a three-month hitting streak and an unwashed pair of lucky underwear.
Here are a couple examples I like to use to illustrate just how little control we actually have:
Johnny’s Place
Johnny had dreamed of opening a restaurant ever since he was a kid in the 90s. His dad gave him some sage advice: “If you want to make it in the restaurant business, you need to work every job in the place—from dishwashing to cooking to managing.”
Johnny took that advice to heart and started washing dishes in high school, then worked as a waiter, a line cook, and eventually managed inventory and ordering while putting himself through culinary school. He saved every cent he could.
In December 2019, after a decade of discipline and planning, Johnny’s Place opened in Manhattan. He couldn’t have been prouder.
Three months later, the world shut down.
Billy Capital Partners
Now take Billy—a handsome high school jock. He might’ve been a decent student, but he was such a good athlete that academics were mostly an afterthought. His grades weren’t great, but they were good enough to get him into the state’s second-tier university.
He graduated in 2010 after four years and a victory lap with a degree in marketing—his buddies swore it was the easiest major. His first job paid $30,000 a year at the local newspaper, and he hated it. So, after a couple years, he started flipping houses. Then came duplexes. Then small apartment complexes.
What Billy didn’t realize at the time was that he was riding the leading edge of one of the longest, most artificially supported, and frenetic bull runs in the history of real estate.
Today, Billy is worth $70 million. He spends most of his time on the golf course—or his yacht.
I’m sorry for Johnny. And I’m happy for Billy.
Now, let’s look at the “I’ll be happy when…” fallacy.
At the core, this is about tethering our inner life to outer conditions. One of my favorite sayings is: “Happiness is an inside job.”
Who hasn’t heard—or thought—some version of this?
“I’ll be happy when I’ve saved enough for my kid’s college and my own retirement.”
“I’ll be happy when I get promoted to a role where I only have to work forty hours a week.”
“I’ll be happy when I find someone to marry.”
I know I’ve been guilty of every one of those thoughts at some point.
The problem is twofold: first, we have surprisingly little control over outcomes (as we’ve already seen), and second, there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
“When” keeps moving.
You’ve saved the money you thought you needed—but now you want to afford a house in Aspen like Billy.
You got promoted—but your new boss micromanages every minute of those forty hours.
You got married—but your spouse isn’t living up to your expectations.
Our culture is incredibly future-focused. We glorify vision boards, five-year plans, and life maps. We’re taught from an early age to keep our eyes on the horizon, to manifest outcomes, to delay gratification in the name of some later reward.
But I’ve come to believe in a healthier orientation—at least for me—and that’s to focus on the present. The present is all we really have. This moment—my fingers moving across the keyboard, your eyes scanning these words (thank you for making me part of your life, by the way).
I have found that when I focus too heavily on the future, life slips through my fingers like sand. I can get so stressed about making and saving money that I trade my daughter’s storybook parade for a couple extra hours of work. Then it’s not just my life that’s out of grasp, but theirs, too.
I fall into similar traps when I dwell on the past. “If only I’d studied X in college,” or “I should’ve never said that…” Now I’m living in regret or resentment, spending time and energy on things that I can no longer reach.
I’m not saying that goals aren’t important. They are. But I’ve learned that becoming attached to achieving them is dangerous for me. So when I do make goals, I try to make sure they align with the kind of man I want to become. Then I work backwards to what I can actually control.
What can I control?
My attitude.
My behavior.
Whether I react—or respond.
That’s about it.
So now I try to live here:
“I’m happy that I cooked tonight and put an extra forty dollars in the bank.”
versus
“I’ll be happy when I save enough.”
“I’m happy that I have a good boss that doesn’t micromanage, and that I enjoy the work that I am doing.”
versus
“I’ll be happy when I get promoted.”
“I’m happy that I am content with myself—and that I am becoming someone I can be proud of.”
versus
“I’ll be happy when I get married.”
That’s a shift in attitude. A shift in perspective.
The outside remains the same. But the inside is changed.
Today, when I’m asked where I see myself in five years, the answer is usually something like this:
I can’t tell you where I see myself in five years. I have no idea if I’ll be alive tomorrow, much less in five years. But, if I am alive, I see myself being a loving husband, a present father, and a person who contributes to society. I see myself being authentic, surrounded by people who energize me.
In other words, I want five years to look a lot like today.