When Logic Fails, Pull a Card: My Tough Career Choice
I hit a wall hard about six months ago. I’m talking about one of those major career pivots where you can’t trust your own gut anymore because your gut is running on fumes and three hours of sleep. I had this huge decision dangling right in front of me, and I was absolutely paralyzed. It wasn’t about money, really; it was about trajectory.
My current job was fine. Stable pay, decent team, easy commute. But it felt like I was just watching the clock tick. I felt like I was hitting peak misery, you know? Then this other option showed up. A startup, super niche, with a product I genuinely believed in. The risk, though? Astronomical. Their funding runway looked shaky, their leadership was ambitious but green, and they were asking me to be the first hire in my department. It was the definition of high-risk, high-reward.
I tried everything to break the stalemate. I built spreadsheets. I calculated risk adjusted returns. I talked to mentors. Everyone gave conflicting advice. One day I was quitting, the next day I was staying put, just waiting for the misery to become unbearable enough to force the move. I was spinning my wheels for weeks, annoying my partner, and frankly, wasting my valuable time.
The Unexpected Tool I Grabbed
One Tuesday morning, after deleting my fifth draft of a pros and cons list, I just snapped. Logic wasn’t helping. I needed a clear warning sign, something psychological, something that could tell me where I was going to inevitably mess up. Not if I would succeed, but how I would fail if I didn’t adjust my approach.
I’m not some mystic guru, but I keep an old, beat-up deck of tarot cards tucked away in my office drawer. I decided, right then and there, that I would treat the situation not as a business problem, but as a practical exercise in divination applied to risk management. Screw the spreadsheets. I was going to pull one card.
I shuffled, focusing entirely on the core question: “What is the real barrier to success in this career transition, and how do I avoid it?” I didn’t want the happy answer; I wanted the truth about the hidden pitfalls. I cut the deck and pulled. It landed face up, right next to my half-empty coffee mug.
The Seven of Spades.
Decoding the Blunt Warning
If you have only read those fluffy “beginner’s guides,” the 7 of Spades might be glossed over as “deception” or “sneaking away.” But in a practical, real-world context, especially when it comes to work and projects, that card is a blunt instrument. It’s not about being deceived by others; it’s about deceiving yourself. It’s the card of retreat after failure—but a failure that was entirely preventable.
The 7 of Spades screams: You’re trying to cut corners. You are grabbing five out of the seven swords you need and leaving two behind, hoping nobody notices. It means you’re relying on cleverness when you actually need hard, meticulous groundwork. It means you are likely to quit too early because you didn’t properly scope the difficulty of the task, or you underestimated the necessary infrastructure.
I stared at the card, and it hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. My excitement over the startup offer was entirely focused on the idea, the title, the potential valuation. But I had completely, strategically ignored the ugly truth: They had zero backend infrastructure, and no reliable hiring pipeline for the engineering talent I would desperately need to succeed.
My barrier to success wasn’t the market or the product. It was my own desire for a quick fix. I wanted to skip the necessary, messy, months-long process of building a foundational team and system. I wanted the outcome without the grueling input. The card was telling me: If you jump now, you will fail because you are neglecting the foundation.
Turning the Failure Warning into a Project Plan
This wasn’t some airy-fairy fortune-telling. This was specific, actionable advice about my operational blind spots. I immediately scrapped the idea of accepting the immediate offer. I realized if I joined on day one, I would spend six months fighting preventable fires and then probably quit out of frustration, exactly as the 7 of Spades predicted.
I called the startup founder back. This is where I put the card’s warning into practice. I pitched a new plan, framed entirely around establishing a solid foundation:
- Phase 1 (One Month): I won’t join full-time yet. I will consult, focusing only on creating a meticulous technical blueprint for the next two years of scaling. We identify all the ‘missing swords’—the neglected infrastructure components.
- Phase 2 (Two Months): Based on the blueprint, we aggressively hire a core, non-negotiable engineering lead. Someone who can actually build the stable base, not just talk about it.
- Phase 3 (Post-Foundation): Only once the hiring is done and the tech stack is confirmed stable and scalable, do I transition into my full-time leadership role.
I essentially forced us to do the painful, boring work of preparation that I was trying to avoid. The founder was taken aback but respected the clear, hard boundary. He agreed. I spent the next two months drilling down into the architecture, and we uncovered a massive flaw in their initial server strategy that would have caused a catastrophic failure within a year of launch. A total collapse.
If I had signed that initial contract, I would have been the one holding the bag when the system imploded. The 7 of Spades didn’t predict my future; it identified my weakest point in the present and forced me to pull the handbrake on my ego and prepare properly. I did eventually join them, but only after that foundation was solid. Now, whenever I feel myself getting too excited and trying to rush a major project, I remember that nasty little card. It teaches me that success isn’t about avoiding risk; it’s about refusing to cut the critical corners that guarantee failure.
