The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

We arrive in adulthood with the thought of what might truly please us very far down our list of priorities.

We start to appreciate that our career analysis is going to take time, that it has many stages, that the reach for an immediate answer can backfire – and that it is a strangely magnificent, delicate and noble task to work out what one should most justly do with one’s brief time on Earth.

ou get a thrill out of guessing correctly what other people require – though it’s not just guesswork, of course, it’s because you’re always on the lookout for little revealing signals that people don’t even know they are sending. You love profit because it is, in many ways, an achievement of psychology: the reward for correctly guessing the needs of others ahead of the competition.

Not everyone sees this, but for you making money is an intellectual pleasure. You enjoy understanding your clients’ needs better than they do themselves; you like coming up with a solution to a problem before other people have even realised there is a problem to be solved.

You know it is nice to have a bit of money (it’s pleasant using an express lane at the airport and having the means to buy a work of art at a friend’s exhibition), but you are clear in your own mind that this isn’t a pleasure of working – it’s a pleasure that comes as a consequence of work. What you enjoy about your job is the process of generating a profit by applying your insights to the problems of the world.

People think you like novelty for its own sake, but they couldn’t be more wrong; you like better solutions, you just know that they often lie in unexpected places and you love hunting them down.

You love to lay down your thoughts on paper. Your mind becomes clearer and your anxiety levels decrease. Some people drink or go jogging to relax. You like to reflect.

You get frustrated when people don’t listen; you want to make them pay attention.

Some people think you are narcissistic, but they aren’t right: it’s that you love sharing things you like with others. It’s not self-regard; it’s a kind of generosity