Unfinished Business

I turned my back on a perfect opportunity last week and am left hoping I made the right decision.

I’ll only know that with time.

Life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Or more casually: hindsight is 20/20.

Once you’ve lived with a decision long enough—it becomes painfully obvious if you chose correctly.

Yet it was impossible to see in the moment.

You may have a hard decision in front of you right now. One that seems insurmountable. But in a few short months you will be able to see how everything panned out—and whether you made the right decision.

I recently made the decision not to go for a job opportunity that I am highly qualified for, would result in a raise, and would result in my qualification for higher pay levels.

I actually have done that job for 5 months without the pay and know that I would be successful at it.

Knowing all of the above, it seems like it would have been an easy choice to take the raise and promotion.

I can get the same pay raise in my current job but it will take until the end of the year to know if I will get the raise. So why not minimize the risk of not getting it by going for a promotion now?

Well, I have a lot of unfinished business in my current role. I just hired my first two associates that I get to train. I haven’t fixed some of the underlying flaws that I noticed the moment that I got into the space. I’m still learning the role and want to make sure that I have an impact and leave a strong legacy when I move on.

It is really hard for me to delay gratification but I know that if I would have taken the immediate raise, I would have been disappointed in how I left the function that I was in. I care a lot about my impact and didn’t want to leave myself in a position where I am in one function wishing I could be in another putting a bow on my work.

In short, the cost of going for the job was much higher internally than the perceived benefits.

But I won’t get to know if I made the right decision until I get to the end of the year, at the very least.

I know that I made the decision that put my conscious at ease—leaving me feeling good at the moment, but that could change with new information in the future.

To be clear, if I do regret the decision, it won’t impact me for more than a moment, but it will impact my future decision making so I can avoid that disappointment in the future.