The Jeff Pulver Blog: Embracing your “Life Major”

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December 02, 2007

Embracing your “Life Major”

Once you know what it is that your Life Major is, the harder part for many of us is actually stopping whatever it was we were doing, switching gears, and following a new career path.

The first time someone embraces their “Life Major” it may represent one of the biggest leaps they will make during the course of their professional lives and a leap that many of us end up taking because it felt like the right thing to do, something we had to do. And while this may seem like a courageous move, in reality there is some kind of safety net since if living the dream doesn’t work out, one might consider going back to whatever they were doing before being inspired to switch professions.

From my own experience, I can say that adopting a new life major, at least the first one, isn’t something that someone just does. Usually they have to be pushed by some other action to make their move. And usually it is a life event that happens which propels a person forward.

While I have changed “Life Majors” multiple times since graduating from University, I don’t know where I would be today if I wasn’t fired from my day job back in July, 1996. It turns out that VoIP saved my life. Especially since I was working in the World Trade Center, in Tower One and I was working for Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, the same company that lost 700 employees on September 11th. I had the kind of job that I could have seen I might have still had five years later.

It was back in July 1996 after being fired from my day job as a VP of Information Technology at Cantor Fitzgerald, I choose for my new Life Major: Producing conferences which focus on the evolution and future of Internet Telephony. I first came up with the idea after attending an event about Internet Telephony in London in April 1996 and I realized the people producing the event knew nothing about the people, the culture or the technology surrounding Internet Telephony. All they knew was how to produce an event. So by the middle of June I was already planning my first conference which was scheduled to take place September 10-11, 1996. Prior to getting fired, I was working on the conference more as a hobby than as a job.

When I was fired, reality hit me. I didn’t have any savings. I had a young family and a mortgage and a burn rate to deal with. The best thing my parents did for me when I got fired was nothing at all. While this must have been a hard decision for my parents to make, the struggle which ensued gave me the opportunity to become the person I am today. A person who was different that the Jeff Pulver working at Cantor Fitzgerald. So in my chase, changing “Life Majors” gave me a chance to grow and to refocus and to find myself and my own voice in an industry that was just getting started.

So far during my career I have changed “Life Majors” a number of times. And for the most part I have no regrets. If anything I’ve very grateful for the opportunities which have presented themselves over the years. And these days I’m gotten to the point where I work on multiple projects in parallel and I look to give myself a chance to change “life majors” whenever it is most appropriate to do so.

So what about you? I’d like to from people who changed “Life Majors” and how they would advise others.

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Readers of my blog are invited to join me on both twitter and Facebook.

Tags: voip, Life Major, Social Media, Jeff Pulver

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Posted by jeff on December 2, 2007 02:29 PM | Permalink

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Posted by: chenlu at February 19, 2009 09:55 PM

Another words we are living in a new world with new challenges and new values.. which well trotted paths seldom address, or at least not in modern times where the rate of change seems to be forever accelerating.

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Posted by: travar at March 24, 2008 08:19 AM

I've changed life majors a number of times over my career, and although sometimes I didn't succeed, I have no regrets.

* Just having a job that pays the rent.
* Being the best in my industry.
* Moving from a technical to a marketing path
* Raising small kids
* Managing my personal relationships (partner, friends, etc.)
* Creating a startup
* Learning to navigate corporate politics
* Running for office in local politics

This is a wide-ranging laundry list. But it was always clear to me that when my Life Major was something to do with my personal life, I was not in a position where I could advance in my professional life. I remember talking to friends and saying things like "I don't like my job, but right now my focus is on my marriage, so work needs to be convenient, not challenging."

In other words, the bottom line is SACRIFICE. If you want to succeed at a life major, or even if you want to fail with honor (I'm about 60/40), you need to sacrifice something. Always time for leisure. Always one of the big items in your life (job or family). Almost always sleep. Usually money. Often relationships.

As Oprah Winfrey said, "You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once."

You need make the sacrifice with the understanding that "This is my life focus right now." After X time, I will move my focus, either naturally or proactively.

Most people who want change speak like this:
* I wish that...
* I hope that...
* I am trying to...

That is BS language.
If you are really talking about your life major you talk actively:

* I am working on a startup.
* My relationship with my children is my biggest investment
* I will be a multi-millionare by 2010

That is active talk of people who are doing. People who change their life tend to be unrealistically confident that they are going to succeed. They are walking the walk. They are living as if their reality is absolutely going to come true. They aren't always right, but that isn't relevant. They win more often than you would predict statistically, and when they lose, they have no regrets.

Posted by: Rebecca Rachmany at December 6, 2007 05:55 AM

I can’t really explain what’s going on right this very moment, but some major changes are about to take place in my life .

Posted by: Emily at December 4, 2007 02:55 AM

I change jobs every four years, anywhere I work happily is related to customer service and writing. I'm starting to think writing is not just my first love, but my only... with the exception of family, of course.

Posted by: Tinu at December 2, 2007 06:51 PM

The idea of changing life majors sounds to me an awful lot like Joseph Campbell's notion of the Hero's Journey. There is some deep inward mystery, a sense in which we are always becoming, and sometimes what's pushing us this way or that way.. that pushes us on these adventures are these deeper things.. which are like a natural force of the psyche searching for equilibrium.. or like a deeper sense of balance between the way we are living and our deep inner nature. The more I learn about the worlds of serial entrepreneurs the more struck I am by the feeling that the folks who live these lives really do seem to live out these patterns in apparently more profound ways then a general population.

I've nearly always thought of my quest as the quest of an artist. But, as married to art as I've been since high school, there were other parts of me that I felt the need to bring to adult maturity. At a certain point in college, when I felt like school was getting in the way of me education, I dropped out.

Eventually I took a life path that involved something a kin to a vow of poverty via which you can achieve something like a classical idea of scholarship which isn't something you do because of x, y, or z career or business objectives, its something you do for the learning.

So I studied politics, philosophy, comparative mythology and religion, history, psychology, music production, interactive design, video, animation, social media, marketing, business, publicity, public relations.. All kinds of things.

Beneath the surface of these seemingly dispirit studies, and time spent in the studio, was some kind of deep inward need. The generalist is often in a position to see relationships between dispirit fields that the specialist misses, and indeed it seems that innovation is about synthesizing formally dispirit fields of information.. And then there's the subject of what defines different subjects as dispirit in the first place?

So for me the subject of a life major has been one of walking out into the unknown where there was no path in front of me to follow.. The path was some mysterious thing inside.. So on one level it might be someone moving from an illustrator / graphic design.. or interactive design type career into something more nebulous.. but from where I'm standing it all seems like a constant straight evolution.. Just at different points it seemed, on the surface, to be changes.

Now I'm at a point in my life's plot where I need to figure how and where I go from here. I was very moved by your presentation at Boston Podcamp 2. Among other things you seemed to be telling me I needed to grow up in a bigger way. This message seeming more timely as my parents health is now starting to falter.

Since PodCamp I've grown more and more serious in my commitment to explore what social media can mean for the artist, and for culture creation more generally. Previous to Podcamp I was far along in trying to figure all this out, but now I'm trying to become more a man of action, I suppose you could say.

I think ultimately, or at least at this point, my quest is one of trying to triangulate my passions, skills, and the marketplace.

I hope that one day when I look back on my life, instead of seeing the crazy person I sometimes see today, I'll see a very interesting and well constructed plot.. That ultimately lead me to myself.

My advice to people is usually to forget about what the world tells you you're supposed to be, and instead try to find that inner voice: There are many well trotted safe paths through life, but those well trotted safe paths carry with them all the baggage of the historical context that lead to there well trotted-ness. Another words we are living in a new world with new challenges and new values.. which well trotted paths seldom address, or at least not in modern times where the rate of change seems to be forever accelerating.

Ultimately what is changing is not human nature but the compartments which hold our nature.. The shape of water may seem to be the shape of the glass we find it in, but the glass is changing. If you listen to your inner nature, it knows best how to fill the new glasses..

Well I say something like that anyway.

Posted by: Matt Searles at December 2, 2007 06:20 PM

One door closes, 10 others open...
From the bottom of my heart -
It takes a lot of "balls" to take on a new direction in life.

Posted by: Danny at December 2, 2007 06:11 PM

As immediate reaction I have one simple advice:

"The biggest obstacle to learning something new is the belief that you already know it"
--Zen philosophy

Posted by: Gab at December 2, 2007 05:34 PM

December 02, 2007

Embracing your “Life Major”

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