Hello! 👋
It’s Thursday, 15th October 2026. Welcome back to Bold Efforts!
There is a wonderful illustration by Tim Urban (Wait buy Why creator) that I've liked for a long time.
It shows a person's life as a series of branching paths. On the left are all the paths that could have been taken but weren't. On the right are all the paths that remain possible.
I find myself thinking about it a little differently these days.
Most of us have things in our lives that haven't worked out quite as we once hoped.
Perhaps it's a career we worked hard towards, a business we started, a relationship we invested in, or a plan to live somewhere that never materialized.
At some point, we genuinely believed these things would turn out differently. We made decisions, committed our time, and imagined what life might look like a few years down the road.
And then life happened.
Sometimes circumstances changed. Sometimes we made mistakes. Sometimes we simply discovered that what we wanted wasn't quite what we had imagined. And sometimes somebody started a war.
I think we're generally quite good at advising other people in these situations. We tell them to think rationally, not to get caught up in what they've already invested, and to make the best decision with the information they have today.
It's much harder to follow that advice ourselves.
There's the time and effort we've already put in, of course. But there's also the uncomfortable business of explaining things to ourselves and to others.
What will people think? How do I explain why something I was so enthusiastic about didn't work out? Was I wrong to pursue it in the first place?
And perhaps that's why we sometimes hold on longer than we should. Not necessarily because we still believe in the path, but because changing direction feels like admitting defeat. Yet I think maybe they are not the same.
A decision could have been perfectly reasonable when we made it and no longer make sense today. We learn things along the way that we couldn't possibly have known at the beginning.
That doesn't mean we should abandon everything the moment things get difficult. Almost anything worthwhile involves uncertainty, setbacks, and periods when progress feels painfully slow.
But there comes a point when perseverance can turn into stubbornness. Knowing the difference is important.
I also think this is becoming increasingly relevant to the world we're living in.
For a long time, we were encouraged to think of careers as relatively predictable journeys. Choose a profession, spend years becoming good at it, and gradually work your way up. Of course, things never worked out quite so neatly for everyone, but that was broadly the idea.
I'm not sure how much longer we can count on it.
Consider how quickly AI is changing what people do at work. Skills that took years to develop may become less valuable, while opportunities that barely existed a few years ago are suddenly within reach. Industries are changing, companies are disappearing, and entirely new professions are emerging.
And it's not just work. The places we live, the lifestyles we aspire to, and even our ideas of what constitutes a good life are changing.
We could do everything right, make perfectly sensible decisions, and still find ourselves in circumstances very different from what we had planned.
Perhaps we'll need to get used to choosing new paths more than once in our lives. And if that's the case, we should probably stop treating every change of direction as something that needs an apology or an explanation.
I've been reflecting on this in my own life recently. One thing I've come to appreciate is that we can be disappointed by how something turned out without regretting having tried it.
It's easy to forget how much courage it sometimes takes to make the original decision. To leave something comfortable, pursue an uncertain opportunity, or attempt something we've never done before.
At the time, we didn't know how things would unfold. We went ahead anyway. Surely that counts for something.
Of course, we should be honest about what went wrong. Some decisions will have been poor ones. Some mistakes will have been avoidable. And some experiences will have cost us more than we expected.
But I don't see much value in spending years punishing ourselves for not knowing then what we know now.
Which brings me back to Tim Urban's illustration.
What I love most about it isn't the collection of paths behind us. It's the enormous number of paths branching out from the present.
We tend to spend so much time thinking about what could have been that we sometimes forget to think about what could still be.
There will always be paths we can no longer take. Opportunities we've missed, decisions we can't undo, and versions of our lives that will remain imaginary.
That's simply part of living.
But there are also people we haven't met, places we haven't visited, things we haven't learned, and possibilities we haven't even considered yet.
Some of the best parts of our lives may still be things we know absolutely nothing about today.
And I find that a rather comforting thought. We were brave enough to choose a path once, not knowing where it would lead. We can be brave enough to choose another. Thank you for reading.
Best,
Kartik
I write Bold Efforts every week to think clearly about where work and life are actually headed. If you want these essays in your inbox, you can subscribe here.