Top 10 Ways to Love Your Job (No Matter What You Do)
Sometimes when you’re in the early stages of your career, you have to do something less than glamorous. By sometimes I mean ‘most of the time.’ Very rarely do we get to start our careers by launching into our dream jobs. Even when we’re lucky enough to work at our dream companies, we have to […]
Top 10 Ways to Develop Personal Freedom as a Young Adult
1. Scrap the permission-based mindset. Waiting for permission is the fastest way to surrender your personal freedom and autonomy. You don’t need someone to say something is okay. If you know it’s right, based on examination and reflection, then go and do it. You don’t need someone’s accreditation to launch into the professional world. Build […]
If You’re Doing it Right, Your Job Will Never Be Enough
Your personal happiness is not a career nor is your career the end-all-be-all to your personal happiness. Yes, I know that happiness is your job and that you’re the CEO of your own fulfillment. I’ve read a copy of Happiness is an Inside Job too, but I’m not playing semantic games here. I mean business. […]
4 Tips to Accelerate Your Apprenticeship Experience
An apprenticeship offers the perfect learning environment for any young adult who wants to accelerate his career. Unlike a typical internship or an entry-level job, the expectations during an apprenticeship provide an atmosphere for value creation and fast growth. Here’s an example of the difference in expectation for apprentices, taken from a guide we wrote […]
How do I find my passion and make my family proud?
This question was asked on a recent episode of the Office Hours podcast: “How do I find my passion and make my family proud?” First, forget about finding your passion. Follow your priorities. Instead of asking yourself ‘what would I do if money were no object’ ask ‘what am I willing to do in spite […]
How to Set Goals and Achieve Them
One of the deadliest mistakes in a young person’s career is the absence of goals. Goals give you something to work towards, something to measure your success against, and something to give you structure. Setting goals is a brilliant catalyst for action. For example, let’s take two cases. In the first case, you get up […]
Why you Should be an Anti-Reader
It’s tinkering, luck, and action that led to discoveries like penicillin, fire, and better recipes for hummus. Indeed, few of the great discoveries and inventions that have increased human flourishing were the product of a complex plan. Likewise, the best opportunities in life are often things we trip into, byproducts of chance or a fortuitous […]
How to Send Effective Follow Up Emails
“I have two professional guests who agreed to be on my podcast. One of them a professor, the other an author. The conversations I had with both guests started out very well. Details were settled. All that was left was for me to tell them when works… No response. I followed up after 2 weeks […]
Celebrate After You’ve Finished the Job
In When You Deliver Work Late, You Invite More Scrutiny, Isaac Morehouse writes: Here’s another reason to get your work done fast (yep, even (especially!) deep, creative work): you’ll get less scrutiny and fewer requested edits…Every day past expectation the project takes, the expectation for perfection ratchets up. From your customer’s perspective, it goes something like […]
Why Non-Tech People Should Work in Tech Startups
“Software is eating the world.” — Marc Andreessen There are several factors that make tech startups the most exciting companies on the planet right now. Dramatically reduced cost of starting one, due to cloud computing. Penetration of software into every corner of every industry. Borderlessness. Instant, global reach. Near-infinite scalability. Explosion of venture capital and […]
What is Willpower and How Should You Use It?
Every year, The American Psychological Association releases the results of the Stress in America Survey. Regularly, respondents cite lack of willpower as the reason they fail to follow through on a healthier lifestyle and don’t meet their financial goals. So, what is this mysterious trait known as willpower and how do we increase it? For […]
Exercise Your Brain Like a Muscle
Even though your brain is an organ rather than a muscle, the practices you set up to strengthen your muscles also work to increase your brain power. My preferred system is: Fuel, Resistance, Rest, Repeat. Fuel In the same way that you’ll “bonk” or “hit the wall” at the end of a marathon if you haven’t […]
5 Ways to Create Value Through a Blog Post
A Praxis participant recently asked me for some tips on how to signal their ability to create value through their writing. More specifically, they wanted to know how to do this without relying on self-help posts that claim to show people the way to enlightenment. As preparation for our advising session, I documented five categories […]
How to Get Work Done: A Primer
Here are the three pillars of getting work done. If you are having trouble with staying on top of your work, chances are that it comes back to one of these three main areas. This is common advice for our participants as they complete their challenging apprenticeships at growing startups. 1. Know what you need to […]
Your Problem is You Don’t Have Enough Problems
The more action you want to take, the more solutions you want to gain, the more you want to achieve, the more problems you’ve gotta have. Problems lead to questions, questions lead to discovery, discovery leads to progress.