A few days ago at Agile Poznań, we discussed a controversial topic: choosing safe work in a corporation versus the challenge of building your own business. It was one of those deep, meaningful conversations that stuck with me for a long time. We generalized this dilemma into a question, borrowed from Jacek Walkiewicz’s famous TED talk: what is worth doing, and what pays off? For those who haven’t seen it, he uses the analogy of buying a camper van to make a point: not everything worthwhile pays off, and not everything that pays off is worthwhile.
A camper sits outside the house for ten months of the year. It eats insurance, maintenance, depreciation, and if it is a truly committed camper, an occasional surprise from the mechanic. Financially, it is not a vehicle. It is a small holiday apartment with headlights.
The calculation is obvious: sell it. Rent a camper when you need one. Take the train. Let cold calculation have its small, beautiful victory.
But the point of a camper is this: it is worth having because, at any moment, you can have a trip. The numbers aren’t wrong. The camper may still be a terrible investment. But it holds something the calculation cannot: the freedom to decide on Friday evening that tomorrow begins somewhere else. You can put fuel, depreciation, and repair bills in a spreadsheet. You can even add a column called “spontaneity,” if you are the kind of person who color-codes their feelings. But the feeling of being able to go is not a number. That, for some people, is reason enough for it to be worth it.
For a long time, asking what will pay off was a very good compass for understanding where my value lay. My main questions to myself were: What should I learn? Where can I be useful? What work is needed? How do I become independent? How do I build enough stability to breathe?
There is nothing cynical about those questions. They help us find our place in the world. They teach us where we can create value. They keep the lights on, which remains one of life’s less glamorous but more persuasive arguments.
But at some point, if things go well, another question arrives: now that I can take care of myself, what do I owe the world that helped me get here?
Because none of us really get here alone.
Someone gives us a first chance. Someone explains something we did not understand. Someone takes a chance on us before we have much evidence that we deserve it. Someone makes an introduction, shares time, opens a door, or simply does not laugh when we ask some silly question.
When I look at the good things in my life, I can see other people everywhere. Not as a vague moral lesson. As a fact.
That makes gratitude feel less like a polite emotion and more like an obligation. I want, over time, to give at least as much as I have received. Not necessarily in the same form. It may be useful products, volunteering, mentoring, sharing knowledge, making an introduction, building something useful, or noticing when someone needs a little more patience or support than the situation technically requires.
Despite the fact that “paying off” can be a useful way to evaluate our choices, it is only one of many important questions. If we ignore the others, we risk becoming extremely efficient at moving in the wrong direction. If you don’t know where you’re going, every step feels like moving forward, even if you’re simply going in circles.
It’s just as important to ask: How do I want to spend my life? What legacy do I want to leave behind? Where is my place in this universe? Who are the people I want to spend my time with? All of them matter.
Michelle Obama in her book “Becoming”, tells a story that has stayed with me for a long time. It was about her friend and roommate in university. While Michelle devoted herself almost entirely to studying and building her career, her roommate chose a very different path. She took a gap year to travel, eventually left university, spent several years in Asia, learned to dance, traveled with her mother, and simply enjoyed life. At the time, Michelle couldn’t understand those choices. From her perspective, her friend was missing valuable opportunities, the best years to study, work hard, and build a career. Then everything changed. Her friend was diagnosed with cancer and died not long afterward. Soon after, her mother also passed away. No one knows for sure what the best way is to spend the life we’ve been given.
That story has stayed with me because it challenges the way we think about success, ambition, and fulfillment. Where should we invest our time and energy? In achievements? In experiences? In relationships? I don’t believe there is a single rule or a universally right answer. Every choice we make shapes our lives. Every decision nudges us in one direction or another, gradually defining our path and, ultimately, our destination. The questions we choose to ask, the ones we decide to answer, and the way we answer them become part of who we are. In the end, we and our identity is the sum of those choices.
Where are you in your own journey, and have you found your questions and answers?