Most of us never actually choose. We get placed in the river of life, by parents, society, circumstances, that one guidance counselor who thought everyone should be a dentist, and we're told to swim.
I'm Adrien Harrison. 5x founder, investor, speaker, coach, and yes, a walking stereotype of a nomadic life coach. I'm here to help you avoid becoming a sad pancake.
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Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse, spent years with people in their final weeks. She compiled their most common regrets:
Notice something? These regrets were never "I wish I'd made more money" or "I wish I'd gotten promoted faster." They're regrets about living someone else's life, because they let their own lives sit in the "someday maybe" drawer for too damn long, collecting dust like last year's New Year's resolutions.
And your career? It determines all 3. It shapes your relationships, dictates where you live, and consumes the vast majority of waking hours you have on this planet.
hours. That's what you'll invest in your career, on average. Maybe 150,000 if you're really committed to the grind... or just bad at retirement.
Choose wrong, and that's a LOTTT of regret, compounding day after day.
Like a very expensive, decades-long trust fall with fate, but fate bails early and leaves you free-falling for 45 years of mediocrity until you splat on the ground like a sad pancake. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know, because I was one. I was that kid who didn't see the point of school. (At the time I mostly just wanted to be a dinosaur or shoot spaghetti from my fingers, BUT the principle stands.) So I did what you're "supposed" to do. I pushed harder. Overworked myself. Chased approval from teachers I didn't like to get grades that didn't matter to me.
And I burned out. Completely. Like a premature burnt pancake: overcooked on one side from overworking, still raw on the other side because I'd never developed the things that actually mattered to me.
Eventually I dropped out. Not because I couldn't do the work (my ego wants you to know this), but because I couldn't justify wasting any more time or money on work that didn't matter to me. That let me get out of the river, realize I don't like speedos anyway, and start asking different questions.
I've spent the last 10 years as a nomad, traveling through hundreds of cities, running multiple businesses, and most importantly, having fun. I went from depressed and burnt out to surfing and working along the Portuguese coast one month, skiing and diving in Japan the next, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, bicycling across Vietnam, and having memorable run-ins with corrupt cops and pirates in Latin America (10/10 would recommend).
I share this not to totally hashtag #humblebrag. The real win isn't accolades or status. It's the return of agency: feeling aligned with your core values, having boundless energy, the freedom to act spontaneously, following your curiosity, and enjoying time with people who matter.
I finally built a life I don't want to escape from. And I didn't flip a magic switch. I just got out of the river so I could stop swimming in someone else's race.
None of them are unicorns. They're smart, capable people who got tired of the wrong life and decided to do something about it.
Karla used to work at Visa. Yes, the giant credit card company. Impressive, well-paid, soul-flattening. She left, founded her own indie game studio called Anima Interactive, and got featured in Forbes 30 Under 30.
She traded soulless quarterly projection meetings for a studio that actually makes things she's excited about. Round corporate pancake to genuinely fluffy pancake.
Alessandro was burning out at a fast-paced t-shirt startup (yes, t-shirts can cause burnout, capitalism is a crazy thing). He pivoted to his lifelong love of sports.
Now he works for the Olympics, gets free seats everywhere, and supports his soccer athlete friends on the pitch. He's living the dream, basically.
Andrea was burning out at Goldman Sachs as a VP in Model Risk, where burnout is baked into the job description like raisins in a bad muffin. He left and co-founded an AI Safety Accelerator with me, then pivoted his whole career toward agentic AI before most people knew the word.
And he still enjoys his wine on the Italian coast. Chef's kiss.
Esther came to me as a freelance actress, talented but stuck, with the kind of career pivot question we all know too well. Today she leads strategic partnerships between Korean entertainment and Hollywood, built her own coaching practice, 3 Hearts Coaching, and became a TED Speaker and Fellow.
Real career. Real income. Real impact.
It's not just blah blah coaching theory. It's the exact series of steps that took me and my clients from burnt out pancakes to fulfilling fluffy pancakes, in careers that let us live life on our own terms.
Take yourself off the heat. You can't make good decisions while you're literally on fire (trust me, I've tried a solid 5 times). Physical reset, mental reset, environmental reset. You can't think your way out; you have to actually change your inputs.
Reconnect with your core values on the Schwartz Value Wheel, a map of what humans care about, backed by research across 82 countries. The bigger the gap between what you value and how you spend your time, the more burnt or flat your pancake becomes.
Start with the end in mind. Write your own obituary: you're 90 and you lived your most meaningful life. Not borrowed ambitions. Yours. The ones that make you want to jump out of bed, not hit snooze 47 times.
Your life, in Tim Urban's boxes: about 90 of them, if you're lucky. You don't get a second batch of batter. This isn't meant to depress you. It's meant to light a fire under your ass (the good kind, not the burnout kind).
Fear setting: define the worst case, prevent it, plan the repair, then compare it to the cost of NOT flipping. Those giant fire-breathing fear dragons turn into slightly overweight, sunburned lizards you can actually handle.
Change your state, so you can change your story, so you can change your strategy. Then start absurdly small, "put on gym shoes after brushing teeth" small, anchor it to a routine, and celebrate tiny wins.
You can't optimize your way to happiness, and you can't just meditate your way to freedom. You need wisdom to stay sane AND systems to stay free. Combined, you become a pancake that's fluffy, golden, and perfectly delicious.
Your next tiny step
If you want any of this to stick, you need 1 of 2 things. Either the discipline of a Shaolin monk, or just a cadence and a partner. That's why I created Simple Guide: so you'll always have that partner, accountability, and a clear next step.
Step 1: the free 20 Minute Burnout Worksheet. About 20 minutes. You'll name what's actually draining you, sort the part you can fix from the part only your job's shape can fix, and pick the 1 thing to change first.
Step 2: book a call with me. We'll map your values, redesign your goals, and craft your next steps, together. The same process that got Karla, Alessandro and Andrea jumping out of bed to tackle goals that make them feel alive, instead of the snooze, scroll, repeat routine.
Compared to 80,000 hours of potential regret, 1 worksheet and 1 conversation are a rounding error. Those boxes on the life-in-weeks chart don't wait for anyone.
So take that 1 tiny step today.
P.S. If today were your last day, what would you wish you had started? The worksheet takes about 20 minutes. It is free.
Simple Guide to Life