In one of the kitchens in my co-working space (CIC, not the other guys), they have a jar of Neapolitan pretzels: dark chocolate, white chocolate (or is it yogurt?), and sickly-sweet strawberry (ick!).

Goodness knows which chemicals they use to flavor them, but the brown ones, the white ones, and the pink ones really do taste different. And that, of course, begs the question: which one is the best one?

Last time I reached into the jar, I caught myself in the act of thinking as I withdrew a handful of my favorite flavor.

These ones are the best! I thought. Those other ones aren’t very good, and don’t even talk to me about the “strawberry.”

Then I realized how ridiculous this is: who was I trying to prove this to, and why?

I’m surely not the only person who somehow tends to end up with a less-than-random selection from the pretzel jar. And I might not be the only one who justifies this sorting with a story about selecting “the best flavor.”

What I finally realized, though, was how deep runs this pattern of thought and speech. Like Malcolm Gladwell’s famous spaghetti sauces, all three flavors are plainly the best — for someone.

And the difference between “this one is best” and “this one is my favorite” turns out to be really important.

Co-working spaces and cookie jars aren’t the only social systems that depend on diversity for vitality. We can’t all sit in the same seat, after all, but there’s more than enough seating for everyone — and more than one of us can enjoy our favorite at once.

If you want to go big, it’s worth pausing first to get the small stuff right.

Big visions are built by small models that scale.

The dance between dreaming bigger and building smaller than feels comfortable is how the best work gets out into the world.

Like Field of Dreams, Marina Keegan’s 2011 article “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” has been a long-time favorite that’s benefited from repeated interactions. Like a high-school history teacher said of the film, I’ve found that “Artichokes” means something different each time I read it.

I re-read it again a couple of nights ago after talking with a friend, who — like so many of my friends — is living the questions Marina poses in “Artichokes.” Which types of roles should privileged, passionate young people be looking for, and why?

Most of all, how do we know which ones to choose?

Though we each have more questions than answers, one thing seems clear: many people who are lucky enough to face an unprecedented variety of unprecedentedly amazing choices are feeling woefully underprepared to face — let alone to make and re-make — those choices in ways that feel effective and ethical.

I’m strongly in favor of classically liberal education for this kind of person. (I certainly wouldn’t trade my own.) I don’t think the point is to “get practical” by shunting humanities students into STEM, finance, or consulting.

Where I think we’re dropping the ball, however, is in not effectively connecting the dots for this kind of person. First, even English majors (or artichokes) will have to turn pro at some point, and that will require a series of choices. Second, the point of a liberal education is not to spend one’s twenties floating lonely as a cloud, but to face these choices with all the rigor and resilience a liberal education is meant to impart.

Third, there is an ocean of good and useful advice out in the world for people who want to be mindful about balancing income, impact, and interest. But I have yet to meet a peer who has raved about how well a career advisor connected her to the resources of the creative economy.

It’s time to change that. Not just at 22 and 23 and 24, but at 27 and 28 and 29 and beyond. Because not knowing how to face the choices others would kill to have might be the greatest disservice of all.

***

In memory, first and foremost, of Marina.

And in gratitude to Seth Godin, Krista Tippett, Debbie Millman, Mark McGuinness, Michael Bungay Stanier, Naomi Dunford, Joceyln K. Glei, Jeff Hittner, Khe Hy, Shane Parrish, Casper ter Kuile, Scott Perry, Louise Karch, Margo Aaron, and many other creative heroes living their way into the answers and teaching what they know.

No, not your boss, or whomever else you technically report to.

Who’s actually managing your work? Who defined success so long ago you haven’t reconsidered it in years, and who’s really setting your strategy now?

Who’s deciding what gets measured, or what matters?

Seth Godin points out the importance of making a conscious decision about what your career is for.

But our ideas about what our work is for probably flow from our ideas about who it’s for.

I had a professor who talked about the committee each of us carries inside our heads — the voices and personas who “advise” us on what’s happening and what we’re doing. Some people have a permanent seat on the committee, he told us, but you can add or replace others.

If your committee isn’t serving you well anymore, see what you can do to change it.

You owe it to yourself. (Your boss might appreciate it, too.)

If the gig economy turns out to be durable, which I expect it will, it begs a question as to how we want to interact with big legacy companies and they with us.

Legacy companies have advantages of scale, prestige, and access. Nobody gets in trouble for hiring the consultants that everyone has heard of.

Small companies (including but not limited to solopreneurs), however, tend to have advantages of agility and originality. They might also have specific domain expertise that a global company would struggle to match on a local project.

What might happen, then, if some of the most prestigious legacy companies began to think of themselves as in-and-out networks rather than up-or-out pipelines?

It would probably feel scary for a comfortable company to begin to think and act as a curator of people and projects rather than a deliverer of a proven product. But I would bet there’s a lot of value in making a move like this.

Perhaps it could start with and for companies at smaller scale.

This has been one of the most powerful and freeing reframes I’ve adopted in the past year or so.

My default model for work has been to “get a job.” In that model, I’m trying out for potential employers and hoping they’ll make the most of the opportunity for me.

By learning to think instead about hiring an opportunity, I’ve begun to put the shoe on the other foot. Rather than hoping that the “right” people will hire me, I can think in terms of hiring the right people for me.

A friend of mine recently told me that her rule during her independent consultant days was “work I love with people I like or work I like with people I love.” That’s not a bad rule of thumb to begin from.

Creativity requires both scarcity and certainty.

Constraints lead to the creative impulse: we build new things because the way things are isn’t perfect and never will be, and the things we create emerge within the limits of the resources available. (Sometimes, the purpose of innovation is to change the constraints. It often has that effect.)

But creativity — at least the kind you think of in an office — also requires some degree of certainty. There’s a fine balancing point between feeling so secure that innovation seems threatening and just secure enough that innovation doesn’t feel like an existential risk.

That point varies from person to person, time to time, and project to project. Designing a system to find and maintain it for yourself is a worthwhile task indeed.

Everyone wants to get the right “fit” at work: culture fit, interest fit, alignment fit … call it what you like.

The question is, how do we know which people and organizations really are a good fit for us?

A nice lunch with your putative boss’s boss’s boss might indeed be a nice lunch — but that’s exactly what it’s for. What does that really tell you about 3:30 on Thursday afternoon three months from now?

I don’t have a good answer to this one. I’ve been wrong-footed plenty of times by reading the signals I wanted to read rather than what was really on offer. I suspect that will happen plenty more times, too.

But surely there’s a way to get better at this — to increase everyone’s confidence that we actually are a good fit. (Remember, employers want that, too. It’s really expensive to retain an employee who doesn’t fit, and even more expensive to re-hire.)

So, the next time you wonder if it’s a fit, consider: How sure are you? And how are you sure?

What would just enough process look like?

Just enough so that you could work more efficiently, more effectively, or at greater scale?

Just enough so that you could close the gap between your business-development imperatives and your promise-fulfillment imperatives?

Just enough so that everyone who ought to be in the know could be, and those who shouldn’t be able to slow you down couldn’t?

Far and away the hardest part of leveling up and leading is getting out of your own way.

A very, very close second is getting out of other people’s way.

Working at scale is something that many of us want — or say we want — yet it’s devilishly challenging in real life.

How can you scale the processes you’ve built up in your own quirkiness?

How can you maintain or adapt your standards across an organization when you can’t possibly be the only person (or perhaps even the primary person) actually doing the work?

How can you design the organization to stay in motion without requiring your constant attention, involvement, or approval?

It certainly isn’t easy, but learning to step back as you step up is essential.