After a run this morning, my friend told me about Linkin Park’s new song, “[Heavy is the Crown](https://genius.com/Linkin-park-heavy-is-the-crown-lyrics).” Apparently they’re making a comeback? I never really got into them, so I don’t know.

But.

I listened to the song on the way home. It gave me a bit of a headache (why are they yelling so much?) but the lyrics were great.

> This is what you asked for, heavy is the crown /
> Fire in the sunrise, ashes rainin' down /
> Try to hold it in, but it keeps bleedin' out /
> This is what you asked for, heavy is the / 
> Heavy is the crown

[No one really seems to know](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkinPark/comments/1fogrhh/what_do_you_think_the_lyrics_to_heavy_is_the/) exactly what the lyrics are referring to. Some say it’s a bash on critics saying the band was over, others say it’s a stab at politicians: “I think it's aimed much more at world leaders in general, politicians playing the politics 'game'. This is what you asked for, you're in a position of power, so deal with all the shit. It's not nice, heavy is the crown, but you put yourself there so do something about it.”

Although I don’t analogize that reasoning to the political sphere, I had the same interpretation about the lyrics. It made me think about people who want something really bad and them complain about it when they get it.

I’m reminding myself of this now when I fall into a victim mindset about law school. For the most part, I’m loving all of the reading and class time. But it’s a lot. And it’s stressful. So much of my future—so they say—rests on my first year. I want to do well so I can get a good job, and because of that, I add even more pressure on myself to perform, feeling like this year is all or nothing.

But sometimes I wonder, is it worth it? When I’m falling into the mindset of, “There’s so much reading,” or, “I’m so busy,” or, “Why do we have to do this extra class?” I’ll try to remind myself, “*this is what you asked for...*”

*I* took the LSAT, *I* wrote the application essay, *I* paid all the money for textbooks. This is, quite literally, what *I* asked for.

Heavy is the crown, but if I don’t want to wear it, I can always just take it off.

Heavy is the Crown


I just finished my second week of law school, and when people say it's a lot of reading...it's a lot of reading—even for someone who loves to read like me.

But I've been explaining to people that, so far, the material isn't hard, it's the volume. It doesn't take the same type of brain power that learning calculus does, but the amount of information you're expected to absorb (and retain) is a lot.

But that's not what this post is about.

I had very little formal training or experience in the law before going to law school. I had a laymen's understanding of the Constitution and knew that we live in a common law system, but I still expected most of the "rules" that govern society to be somewhat clear.

They're not.

For the ten days I've been in school, this was frustrating to me for nine of them. When we're given cases to read, I want to be able to finish the case and understand that rule completely. I felt like I could do that the first week, but then during the second week we read so many cases that essentially reversed the rules we read in the first week, or changed them so drastically, that those cases aren't as clear as I thought they were.

On the face of it, that isn't too difficult to understand. It's important to know how the law has changed over the years because it will change again. The difficult part is that the new cases don't "wipe away" the old ones every time. They're only applicable sometimes...and other times the original ones apply...and sometimes *none* of them apply! Can you see how this becomes difficult?

This was really starting to confuse me until one of my professors made an off-hand comment that is going to be my motto for the rest of my time in law school—and maybe even after I graduate.

A student was trying to get clarification for when we're supposed to use one standard over another, and my professor kind of took a deep breath and said something alone the lines of: *You guys want me to give you a bright line answer. If I could give you a bright line answer, I'd be on the Supreme Court because I could say 'This is the law now, move on.' But practicing law is not like that. Ambiguity is where the work is. If there wasn't ambiguity, we wouldn't have jobs.*

**Ambiguity is where the work is.**

I immediately wrote that phrase down in my notebook and have been thinking about it all week. Before, the ambiguity was frustrating; now, it's exciting. Yes! Ambiguity—that means I get to research this problem and think deeply about what I think should happen (or shouldn't happen), come up with an argument for why, and then argue that. Ambiguity is where the work (and the money) is. If the law was black and white, and anyone could easily figure out what to do, there would be no need for lawyers. And the little need there would be for them wouldn't create the range of "Ok" lawyers, "good" lawyers, and "great" lawyers that we have today. Ambiguity gives me the opportunity to become great.

This isn't just in the legal field, though. Many people now are some sort of "knowledge worker." They don't work with their hands, they make proposals and sit in meetings and create strategy decks and figure out how to run their department. All of those situations are full of ambiguity. If there was a playbook, they wouldn't need to pay you! They could pay some kid who knows how to flip burgers at McDonald's to "flip burgers"—follow the exact steps laid out for them by "best practices" or something—in their marketing department.

Embrace the ambiguity. That's where the work (and the money) is.


Ambiguity is where the work is


A lot of "complicated" problems have simple solutions.

It doesn't seem like this is true because smart people don't want to admit that their problems have simple answers; they want to feel like they have difficult problems that need years of experience to solve.

Ravi Gupta, a partner at Sequoia, told this story in an interview on [The Knowledge Project](https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/ravi-gupta/):

> There’s this person who I worked with at Instacart….She was an ops leader in San Francisco, and the scenario she would give during an interview is, "You’re one of the managers in San Francisco, and one of the people at the Safeway in Potrero Hill calls you and says, 'The refrigerator where we store the groceries isn't working. What do we do?"
> 
> She said you get all these answers…. Sometimes people have backgrounds that are academic in nature. They'd say, “I’d call all the rest of the stores and I’d figure out if there’s a systematic problem with our fridges.” “I would analyze the data, I’d look at the sales that we’re going to lose in that store based on the fridge, and I would try to create a new algorithm that didn’t have people drop it off in the store,” and all these answers.

At first, this seems like a "complicated" problem. The fridge plays a vital role in Instacart's business at a store. If the fridge is broken, what do they do with all the orders? They could cancel them, but that would make a lot of customers angry. They could try and transfer the orders to a different store, but again, that would leave a lot of customers unhappy. Maybe you could run a promo for free delivery? But if you did that, you'd have to get engineers involved to make it all work in the app.

This is how easy it is to make it feel like you have a "complicated" problem.

The answer they were looking for in the interview was devastatingly simple:

> Then the people she’d hire every time would be like, “I’d go to Potrero Hill and I’d fix the fridge. Or, I’d go and stop somewhere else and buy a new fridge and bring it there.” Every time. She’s like, **“The answer is ‘Fix the fridge.’** Find a way to have us have a refrigerated thing as soon as possible so we can continue to run the business.”

Don't overcomplicate the problems in your life to make yourself aware of—or demonstrate to others—your brilliance.

If you have a problem, look for the simple solution first.

If the fridge is broken, fix the fridge.


Fix the fridge

An explanation helps all parties understand why something went wrong. By offering an explanation, you’re saying, “This thing happened because Y. It’s my fault Y happened. I’m not sure how I didn’t see that coming. In the future, I will do X and Z to make sure Y never happens.”

That is a great explanation and something everyone wants to hear after they catch a mistake you made. You’re accepting the responsibility for the mistake and explaining why it happened.

An excuse helps whoever made the mistake feel better about themselves. They blame Y, not their lack of foresight to predict Y and prevent it. When you offer an excuse, you say, “Y caused this thing to happen. I was working an A and B so I couldn’t also work on Y. Who was supposed to be working on Y?”

One accepts responsibility; the other shirks it.

When you make a mistake, don’t be afraid to explain what happened. People—especially bosses—like to know why things went wrong.

Just be careful not to offer an excuse.

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