5 Career Principles

 The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson’s newsletter shares some good career advice.

1. Your career is not your life: Thompson reminds us that the typical person has five waking hours of not working for every one hour of their career. He goes on –“work is too big a thing to not take seriously. But it is too small a thing to take too seriously. Your work is one-sixth of your waking existence.”

2. Explore and Exploit: Many successful people are like good oil scouts: They spend a lot of time searching for their space, and then they drill deep when they find the right niche.

3. Don’t do the job you want to tell other people you do. Do the job you want to do. This actually was a quote from the write James Fallows. I think more and more younger workers are following this, but every once in a while, I do run into people who prefer to focus on the company they work at vs. the work they do.

4. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what you value—and how much professional success matters to you. Basically, think about how important success is to you? What’s more important? Success or the journey.

5.. Flow comes from voluntary, difficult, and worthwhile work. Think about what puts you in the zone. A few years ago, I left a company because I spent more time working on business planning than ‘doing the work’ and ‘building things.’ Two things that put me in the zone.

In sum (my words) — test out different career, find what you enjoy doing, figure out what success means to you, and if you can make it work financially, go for it.

#sundaythoughts #takeawalkonthewilderside #careerstrategy

To read more, go to The Atlantic