People I (Mostly) Admire 13. Yul Kwon: “Don't Try to Change Yourself All at Once.” (UPDATE)
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Mar 21, 2026 
Yul Kwon, former lawyer, FBI Academy instructor, entrepreneur, Survivor winner, and current Google researcher. He talks about overcoming severe childhood anxiety, taking small steps to change, treating a career as a portfolio, the social strategy and game theory that won Survivor, and how island life clarified his priorities.
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Bootcamp Revealed Cultural Habits Under Stress
- Marine Officer Candidate School forced Yul to override instinctive deference learned in Korean culture and adopt a more projecting posture.
- After bowing to a major and getting punished, he realized stress brings cultural reflexes and deliberately mimicked peers to succeed.
Portfolio Thinking For A Nonlinear Career
- Treat your career as a portfolio where different roles accumulate the skills and satisfactions you want over time.
- Yul intentionally shifted jobs to optimize for learning, mission, compensation, and colleagues across many short stints.
Balance Breadth With Deep Expertise
- Avoid switching jobs so often that you never become the expert in the room; seek a balance between breadth and depth.
- Yul regrets being a little too general and sometimes wishing he had deep expertise rather than shallow knowledge across many fields.