Don’t wait!

“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.” (Paulo Coelho)

When I was 17, just a few weeks before my final high school exams, I had an accident playing soccer. Somehow my boot got stuck in the soft mud, and I twisted my knee. I tore my ACL, damaged my meniscus and a few other ligaments in my knee. From one day to the other, I went from being sporty and active to walking on crutches.

To me, this was a wake-up call – which echoed through many decisions I made later in my life & career. Life is short and can change any instance, so make sure you make time for what is important for you now rather then wait for “later”. Because “later” might never come.

I was lucky. My “later” came. There are some things I cannot (or should not) do anymore, but overall, I really consider myself lucky, having made a pretty good recovery.

But as I said, the lesson stuck and was, for example a driver for me starting over during my Ph.D.: I had gone straight from my physics master’s degree into a physics Ph.D. and was working in quantum optics. We tried to understand the fundamental mechanisms of interaction between light and matter. But after a year, I realized my heart was not into it. I liked the structured, analytical way of working, but I wanted to work on something with more real-world impact. It was initially a tough decision, facing the prospect of putting all those years I had spent in physics behind me. But then I remembered the lesson from my soccer accident. The key realization was that even if I finished the physics Ph.D., I would be looking to do something else afterward. So why wait? And this is how I ended up getting a Ph.D. studying organizational design and development of healthcare services.

What are the things you want to do? What makes you wait or consider waiting?