Staying Put

• Most people would never consider marrying a partner until they’ve dated for at least a year, maybe five, because it takes that long to grasp what a person is or isn’t capable of beyond their surface-level resume.
• However, people expect their employers and coworkers to give them full respect, autonomy, and confidence from the start. It rarely happens.
• Trust has to be earned, and it’s mostly earned through firsthand observation over time when people watch you under a variety of circumstances. Even when you have a track record at other companies, trust is doled out in small doses initially.

The key is that you’ll probably do your best work when you've earned your colleagues’ trust, which is the hidden value of staying put.

This is especially true if your job involves making good decisions vs. doing something physical with your body. Good decisions require lots of quiet time alone in your head, maybe sitting on the couch thinking or going for a walk. It rarely looks like work, which means your coworkers have to trust you when you’re doing it.

In investing, selling after a bad stretch feels like the right thing to do. You learned your lesson and seek greener pastures. But everything we know about investing shows it’s the wrong action: the big money comes from compounding uninterrupted over years and decades, when what you’ve done is not as important as how long you’ve been doing it for.