Own, Rent, or Hotel: The Question You're Not Answering
Last time we ran the Sunday Night Test — dread as data. This week: what to do with the data. Think of your relationship with your job like owning a house, renting an apartment, or staying in a hotel. When you own, you invest — you renovate, you maintain, you build for the long term.
When you rent, you keep it nice, but you're not knocking down walls. In a hotel, you're passing through. Here's the part most versions of this advice get wrong: these aren't 3 equal lifestyle choices. Most people should be treating their current role like they own it.
Investing. Building. Playing the long game. Renting is the mode you shift to only after you've decided — decided, not fantasized — that you're leaving. Then you stop the long-term renovations and focus on the transition. The damage lives in the 2 dishonest positions.
Renting while pretending you own: the Director who accepted a 2-year stretch assignment knowing she'd leave after the bonus hit — she went through the motions for 8 months, and her team could feel it in every meeting, even though no one said it out loud. And owning while secretly wanting to leave: the SVP who kept launching initiatives because stopping would mean facing the question he'd been avoiding. The work was impressive.
The motivation behind it was escape. So ask yourself, right now: am I an owner, a renter, or a hotel guest in this role? There's no wrong answer. But there's a wrong answer you're not admitting to — and if the Sunday feeling has been talking to you, the honest answer to this question is usually what it's been trying to say.
The Horizon series continues. The full frame is in The Right Move.
The Right Altitude Field Guides — one dimension at a time. therightaltitudebook.com/the-field-guides
Comments