make me do so.” Darwin was a Bible literalist at the time, and figured he would become a clergyman. He bounced around classes, including a botany course with a professor who subsequently recommended him for an unpaid position aboard the HMS Beagle. After convincing his father (with his uncle’s help) that he would not become a deadbeat if he took this one detour, Darwin began perhaps the most impactful post-college gap year in history. His father’s wishes eventually “died a natural death.” Decades later, Darwin reflected on the process of self-discovery. “It seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman,” he wrote. His father, a doctor for more than sixty years, detested the sight of blood. “If his father had given him any choice,” Darwin wrote, “nothing should have induced him to follow it.”
Michael Crichton started with medicine too, after learning how few writers make a living. With medicine, “I would never have to wonder if the work was worthwhile,” he wrote. Except, a few years in he became disenchanted with medical practice. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, but decided to become a writer. His medical education was not remotely wasted. He used it to craft some of the most popular stories in the world—the novel Jurassic Park, and the TV series ER, with its record-setting 124 Emmy nominations.
Career goals that once felt safe and certain can appear ludicrous, to use Darwin’s adjective, when examined in the light of more self-knowledge. Our work preferences and our life preferences do not stay the same, because we do not stay the same.
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Psychologist Dan Gilbert called it the “end of history illusion.” From teenagers to senior citizens, we recognize that our desires and motivations sure changed a lot in the past (see: your old hairstyle), but believe they will not change much in the future. In Gilbert’s terms, we are works in progress claiming to be finished.
Gilbert and colleagues measured the preferences, values, and personalities of more than nineteen thousand adults aged eighteen to sixty-eight. Some were asked to predict how much they would change over the next decade, others to reflect about how much they had changed in the previous one. Predictors expected that they would change very little in the next decade, while reflectors reported having changed a lot in the previous one. Qualities that feel immutable changed immensely. Core values—pleasure, security, success, and honesty—transformed. Preferences for vacations, music, hobbies, and even friends were transfigured. Hilariously, predictors were willing to pay an average of $129 a ticket for a show ten years away by their current favorite band, while reflectors would only pay $80 to see a show today by their favorite band from ten years ago. The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been. That feels like the most unexpected result, but it is also the most well documented.
It is definitely true that a shy child is more likely to foreshadow a shy adult, but it is far from a perfect correlation. And if one particular personality trait does not change, others will. The only certainty is change, both on average as a generation ages, and within each individual. University of Illinois psychologist Brent W. Roberts specializes in studying personality development. He and another psychologist aggregated the results of ninety-two studies and revealed that some personality traits change over time in fairly predictable ways. Adults tend to become more agreeable, more conscientious, more emotionally stable, and less neurotic with age, but less open to experience. In middle age, adults grow more consistent and cautious and less curious, open-minded, and inventive.* The changes have well-known impacts, like the fact that adults generally become less likely to commit violent crimes with age, and more able to create stable relationships. The most momentous personality changes occur between age eighteen and one’s late twenties, so specializing early is a task of predicting match quality for a person who does not yet exist. It could work, but it makes for worse odds. Plus, while personality change slows, it does not stop at any age. Sometimes it can actually happen instantly.
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Thanks to YouTube, the “marshmallow test” could be the most famous scientific experiment in the world. It was actually a series of experiments starting in the 1960s. The original premise was simple: An experimenter places a marshmallow (or a cookie, or a pretzel) in front of a nursery school child; before leaving, the experimenter tells the child