I consider myself a smart fellow, but i’m rarely the smartest person in the room. Somewhere along my adulting journey, I realised that being the smartest person was a liability, not an asset.

Our brain power grows by being stretched, and the moment it realises it no longer needs to apply itself, it goes into stasis. Having grown up in the 8-4-4 education system, where the goal was to be declared the smartest, or one of the smartest, by virtue of your academic ranking, I have had to painfully unlearn this need to be the smartest. Today, if I notice that I am the smartest person around, I make a point of exiting that room at the earliest possible opportunity. To quote a former boss, I choose to never become the ‘Giant among Dwarves’.

I have risen to the echelons of two career paths – Digital Marketing & Customer Experience. In both cases, the moment it became clear I would now be rotating horizontally without scaling any new heights of impact, I switched careers, often to the chagrin and confusion of my bosses and colleagues.

The reality of the career switching process is much harder than it sounds though. I am in my 3rd (and hopefully final) career path. To make the last switch, I had to endure an arduous learning curve, and the loss of about 2/3 of my Annual earnings. Not a walk in the park, but a worthy walk.

I envy people who find their career paths early, and those paths are broad and dynamic enough to enable them to keep scaling to new heights and encounter new challenges year in year out.

I don’t envy people who settle for being adept at a particular, non-evolving field, and end up in long career paths, doing jobs they could do with their eyes closed, while enjoying the perks of job security. While I recognise the world needs such people to keep the wheels of our economies running, I have come to know that God created me differently. If you happen to be like me, dissatisfied with status quo, and excited by challenges, then this post is for you.

I have worked in large corporates, and small companies during a period of downsizing. I couldn’t help but notice that the people who the HR cuts go for are often the loyal, dependable, long serving performers. Here’s the painful truth; in moments of crisis, these people become financial baggage that needs to be thrown out to Sea. I have seen the tears, and heard the heart wrenching ‘after I gave this company X years of my life’ speeches. In many cases, these People don’t know what to do with themselves in the big, uncaring world outside the Company they had served so faithfully. They can’t swim with the Sharks, so they drown, in depression, in financial trouble, in confusion. They had acquired Papers in careers that have long been disrupted, so those Papers can’t help them find the next job. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Steve Jobs famously said, ‘Stay Foolish, Stay Hungry’. A growth mindset means that if you get comfortable, you seek discomfort – in new challenges, in new skills, in new tasks. If you are the smartest in the room, the department, the Company, the Industry even, get scared, very scared, and find a way out, because the countdown to your demise has started.

Today’s world has no room for settlers.