Advice
Miscellaneous advice
Advice
Goal-setting is everywhere. Everyone knows it's the right thing to do. I've got to focus. I've got to have goals and objectives. I've got to communicate these goals and objectives to those around me. We've got to get on that proverbial "same page" and goals are the way.
Just a moment...
"How often do you floss Joe?"
"Uh, not very often."
"That's ok" she said. "Just floss the teeth you want to keep."
Recently I’ve gotten a lot of inbound from new grads asking for career advice, so I wrote down a list of things I wish I’d internalized sooner.
The key thing: being precocious has an expiration date. Threading the note in its entirety: https://t.co/dW7DAcmyng
Timeless advice:
You need to be good, not good for your age
Be wary of personal mission creep, both IRL and online
Prioritize finding friends and collaborators you'd like to have in your life for a long time
Avoid chasing the red herrings of success
Interesting life paths are generally non-repeatable
Keep your standards everything—but especially for your own conduct—high
Own your mistakes
Forgive your parents, and get to know them. Especially if you are the child of immigrants
Embrace commitment in work and personal matters
Mutual obligations are a gift—cherish them and run towards them
Take your work seriously, but yourself less so
Send your users this welcome email
justinjackson.ca
Handy
People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear .
Chris Dixon • Climbing the Wrong Hill | Cdixon Blog
- The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.- The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you’ll enter, what companies you’ll work for, what roles you’ll have, where you’ll... See more
Marc Andreessen • Pmarchive · Pmarca Guide to Career Planning: Opportunity
It's all obvious in hindsight.
I had a very detailed career plan when I started my first job in oil and gas. In fact, the company encouraged us to make these plans. Then they'd make their own plans for you. It was probably only possibly because the rate of change there continues to reduce… at least with regards to the things that are important for career planning.
5 years later, I don't have a career plan. I feel liberated.
fast forward a year from now. your life is the best it's ever been, entirely as a result of your own choices.
what choices did you make now and in the coming months that created that reality for you?
Profound. I'll have to return to this one.
It strikes me a higher-level decomposition of that Naval thread.
God, grant me the clarity to recognize when I need Advice,
The humility to seek Information when I lack understanding,
The courage to ask others to help me Do what I cannot alone,
The frankness to connect in hard times and good,
And the confidence to invite advocates to speak on my behalf.
May each request for aid be an offering of trust,
And each accept
... See moreRemembering that the tech industry is being built by people just figuring things out on the fly isn’t just a way to avoid stress; it’s become one of the most empowering bits of advice I can imagine. Because if all those people out there have changed the world while not knowing what they were doing…so can I.