Billy Oppenheimer

writing/research assistant to Ryan Holiday

There are many spokes on the Career hub, Ryan told me. When weighing opportunities, people tend to over-index on the

salary/compensation spoke, he said. But there's also the
people spoke—the people you work for and with, as well as the people you meet through the people you work for and with.
knowledge and information spoke—the ideas you work on, the things you learn, and the skills you acquire.
trajectory spoke—the path you are put on and the life you will eventually carve out, the person you will eventually become as a result of the people you worked for/with, the ideas you worked on, the things you learned, and the skills you acquired.

In a later conversation, Ryan told me that the most important spoke of all is the work itself. “The work has to be the win,” he said. “So ultimately,” Ryan told me, “you have to Love doing the Work. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”