Lu SHEN

One thing I didn’t realize until later in life is how the incentives of an industry shape your mood, your outlook, and even your character. In early stage investing, the incentives reward optimists, so it literally pays to keep an optimistic outlook. In journalism, the opposite is true. In law, the incentives often reward finding the flaw or the anomaly. In litigation, a combative nature is rewarded. It’s later in career when you realize that disposition matters. Looking back there were careers that were antithetical to my nature, even if I had the functional skills to do them well. This may sound obvious but not a single person ever told me this.