So evaluate each piece of the puzzle in the context of the others. And do so regularly: the pieces of the puzzle change in shape and size over time. The way they fit together shifts over time. Building a competitive advantage in the marketplace involves combining the three pieces at every career juncture.

Start learning a skill during the evenings and weekends. Start building relationships with people who work in an adjacent industry. Apply for a part-time internship. Start a side consulting practice.

As Grove says, “[A] career inflection point results from a subtle but profound shift in the operating environment, where the future of your career will be determined by the actions you take in response.”6 An inflection point at your company or industry usually will require you to either change your skills or change your environment. In other words,

ABZ Planning is the antidote to the “what color is your parachute” approach to career planning. It is an adaptive approach to planning that promotes trial and error. It allows you to aggressively pursue upside and mitigate against possible downside risks. ABZ Planning isn’t something you do once early in your career. It’s a process as important for

Weak ties can uniquely serve as bridges to other worlds and thus can pass on information or opportunities you have not heard about. We would stress that it’s not that weak ties per se find you jobs; it’s that weak ties are likely to be exposed to information or job listings you haven’t seen. Weak ties in and of themselves are not especially

while entrepreneurial companies and people are always evolving, the choices they’re making are disciplined, not random. There is real planning going on, even if there are no firm plans. We call this kind of disciplined, adaptive planning ABZ Planning, and it’s what we’ll cover in the balance of the chapter.

You won’t encounter accidental good fortune—you won’t stumble upon opportunities that rocket your career forward—if you’re lying in bed. When you do something, you stir the pot and introduce the possibility that seemingly random ideas, people, and places will collide and form new combinations

All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were all self-employed … finding our food, feeding ourselves. That’s where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it. We became “labor” because they stamped us, “You are labor.” We forgot that we are entrepreneurs.

Second, this philosophy presumes that fixed, accurate self-knowledge can be easily attained. In fact, lofty questions about identity and moral purpose, along with deceptively simple ones like “What am I passionate about?” take time to work out, and the answers frequently change. It’s unwise, no matter your stage of life, to try to pinpoint a single