About Professional Ambition

Nowadays, conversational topics like career advancement, salary and romantic relationship are becoming increasingly common in my social gatherings with friends and colleagues. While most of them are eyeing on glamorious job titles and wish to climb the corporate ladder as soon as possible, I couldn't care less about my career development. To me, being deeply rooted in corporate world will only add further sorrows in my life as my career will consume more of my personal time and put extra stress to my life. Of course, in exchange I will have additional digits in my bank account every month and the sense of job satisfaction which has short shelf-life and is subjective in nature.

I prefer to earn extra bucks through scalable work such as teaching on part-time basis. At least the amount of effort I put in is proportional to my pay. Getting promoted doesn't provide me this scalability and you are expected to sacrifice more personal time to work overtime. Despite saying this, if my boss decides to promote me one day, I will have to take the offer because I do not want to reject and offend him/her indirectly in the process. Unfortunate!

Some people will criticise me as being "unambitious", "lazy" & "loser". While they are partially correct in the sense that I do not fit into societal's definition of success, I have different views about it. To me, freedom from compulsory work is one of my major milestone I strive to achieve before 40. As I am going to retire early in my hometown Ipoh which has much slower pace of life and lower living expenses, I have extra buffer to not to aim high in professional development in Singapore while building my retirement income portfolio at the same time. If I am being criticized of having this mentality, so be it.

To be able to choose my lifestyle without having to worry about cash flow is my definition of success and it is much easier to achieve as compared to climbing to the top corporate ladder. Till then, I shall wait!