You Are Not Behind
Careers don't unfold on a schedule — even when it feels like everyone else is getting there first.
There is a moment in the story of Hamilton that I keep coming back to.
In 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda was on vacation after the success of In the Heights when he started reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton.
He saw something in the story that most people wouldn't have seen.
Hip-hop.
Miranda began working on what he initially called The Hamilton Mixtape. In May 2009, he stood at the White House and performed an early version of the opening number.
The audience laughed when he explained the idea.
Then he performed it.
And he kept working on it.
The finished musical didn't open on Broadway until August 2015.
Six years.
Today, that period collapses into a sentence:
Lin-Manuel Miranda created Hamilton.
But that's not what it felt like while it was happening.
There were thousands of ordinary days between the idea and the outcome.
That's true of most things worth building.
And it's worth remembering when you start wondering whether you're behind.
We have created a fictional career timeline
Most professionals have some version of it.
✔️ You graduate.
✔️ You get the first job.
✔️ You move up.
✔️ You become a manager.
✔️ Then a director.
✔️ Then an executive.
Your income rises. Your responsibilities increase. Eventually, you've "made it."
Except real careers rarely cooperate. Companies reorganize. People get laid off. Industries change.
A great opportunity turns out to be a terrible fit.
✔️ Family responsibilities alter priorities.
✔️ Health changes.
✔️ You choose stability for a while.
✔️ You take a risk.
✔️ You fail.
✔️ You recover.
Or you simply wake up one morning and realize the career you spent years building isn't quite the career you want anymore.
None of that fits neatly on a résumé.
But it is a career.
LinkedIn gives us the highlight reel
Professional social media creates an unusual psychological problem.
We see hundreds of career milestones without seeing the years separating them.
Someone announces:
I'm thrilled to share...
🔹 A promotion.
🔹 A new company.
🔹 A funding round.
🔹 A board appointment.
🔹 A new business.
We're happy for them. But somewhere in the back of our minds, another calculation can begin:
What about me?
We compare their announcement with our Tuesday afternoon.
🔹 Their destination with our uncertainty.
🔹 Their polished outcome with our work in progress.
That's an unfair comparison.
There was a Tuesday afternoon in their story too.
Probably hundreds of them.
Maybe you couldn't have done it earlier
We also tend to assume that earlier achievement is inherently better.
I'm not sure it is.
Think about what experience actually gives you.
🔹 Pattern recognition.
🔹 Judgment.
🔹 Relationships.
🔹 Perspective.
🔹 The ability to walk into a complicated situation and recognize what matters.
🔹 The ability to know when the obvious solution isn't the right one.
🔹 The confidence to say, "I've seen something like this before."
Those things take time.
There may be work you're capable of doing today precisely because of everything that happened before today — including the parts of your career you once considered detours.
STOP and PONDER:
I think one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves is not:
Why am I not further ahead?
It's this:
What am I capable of doing now that I couldn't have done five or ten years ago?
That question recognizes something important.
You're not standing still while the calendar moves.
You're accumulating something.
If you're in the messy middle
Maybe you're looking for another job.
Maybe you're trying to move into leadership.
Maybe you're building something on the side.
Maybe you've been laid off.
Maybe you're doing reasonably well professionally but still have the nagging feeling that there should be something more.
Or maybe you don't know what's next.
That's okay.
You don't need to pretend uncertainty is a strategy.
But you also don't need to interpret uncertainty as failure.
The middle of a story rarely looks impressive while you're living through it.
It just looks unfinished.
Three questions worth thinking about
Take ten quiet minutes this week and ask yourself:
1. Whose timeline am I using?
When I say I "should" be further ahead, where did that expectation actually come from?
2. What can I do today that I couldn't have done five or ten years ago?
Think beyond technical skills. Consider judgment, relationships, resilience, confidence and perspective.
3. If I stopped worrying about being behind, what would I build toward next?
Not what you're supposed to want. What actually matters to you now?
You don't need perfect answers.
Just pay attention to what comes up.
One last thought
Eventually, the years Miranda spent creating Hamilton became part of a great success story.
But while he was living those years, the ending wasn't guaranteed.
Neither is ours.
That's part of the deal.
We don't get to know exactly how all the pieces will fit together while we're still collecting them.
So if your career doesn't look exactly the way you once imagined it would, don't automatically conclude that something has gone wrong.
✔️ You may be changing.
✔️ You may be rebuilding.
✔️ You may be preparing.
✔️ You may be discovering what you're actually good at.
✔️ You may be working on something that simply needs more time.
You are not behind.
You're still becoming.
— Russ
Unbreakable Edge is about building stronger careers, stronger leadership and a stronger life — especially when the path doesn't go according to plan.
