How to Create a Career As Companies Do: A New Approach for the New Year
Your masterplan must be the best version of a business plan
Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know.- Ray Dalio in Principles
Before I decide to turn into a full-time writer, I busted 2 companies and was almost bankrupt those two times.
So, what do I know?
But something I learned from those dark days. I didn’t know what to do, but I sure did know what not to do. The learning process is as efficient as that. Make errors, learn, and move on. Make errors, learn, and move on. That’s the path.
Yet, don’t repeat the same errors, or you’ll stay in the same spot your entire life. And you don’t want that to happen. You should read books about how not to do things. Unfortunately, they don’t exist.
However, you have biographies. They will tell you what not to do. Biographies describe the life of a person. The good and the bad moments. You can see through the narrator’s eyes what went wrong, how he felt, and what he did to change.
I force myself to read one biography per year. I am currently in the middle of Tim Cook’s biography. I don’t want to stop learning how these leaders achieved such brilliant lives. What were the sacrifices, the pain process, the learning curves?
Two years ago I read Elon Musk’s bio. And one phrase kept singing in my mind.
Be less wrong.
It’s always up to you to decide how valuable these lessons are and how can they impact your personal life, for you to embrace a be less wrong philosophy. If you read as much as I do, you can see that there are principles that cut across all those who achieved great things.
Every day, each of us is faced with situations that we have to respond to. But without principles, we would respond to each situation like it would be the first time.
However, if we classify these situations into types and have good principles for dealing with them, we’ll make better decisions faster and we’ll improve our quality of life as we know it.
To Have Meaningful Work Is a Tremendous Happiness
Don’t try to do your thing.
Do what the best already proven to work. You’ll save time, hassle, and make the learning process more effective.
Think of yourself as a company. Companies have competition, constraints about money, different departments working at different paces, workers with different motivations, and so on.
But you are a writer. It’s just you and yourself. However, as a writer, you have different departments too.
Let me announce some of them:
- Creative department;
- Grammarly department;
- Editing department;
- Brand department;
- Research department;
- Financial department.
All of them in one person. I know it can seem like a Herculean task, but if people like Sinem Günel or Shannon Ashley did it, why can’t you do it too? It works as a whole, and you cannot facilitate or neglect any of them.
Evaluate What You Want, Because What Gets Measured, Gets Produced
Constantly train, test, and evaluate.
You could be in an environment where nobody talks about work, about how to do things. But in the writing business, you have tons of information, free and paid, on how to be a better writer. It’s not a closed door. It’s a gigantic wave of tools, tips, and information at your disposal.
You also have examples of top writers that explain, publicly, how they did it. How they achieved such a level of efficacy. You have to turn yourself into a complete machine (with soul, please). Having the capacity to see things from a helicopter perspective, flying so high that you can see the whole. And the whole is you.
Try to understand which ones are priorities, in different stages of the process. Record, evaluate, and readjust. Realize that with the top writers it worked, and therefore, the chances of working with you are much greater than you inventing them out of thin air.
When you get personal evolution right, the returns are exponencial.- Ray Dalio in Principles
Personal evolution can be a relatively rapid process. It’s a consequence of little discoveries about your strengths and your weaknesses. Once you pass through that process of acknowledgment, you’ll be rewarded with results. And the results translate into motivation, pride, and strength to continue.
Perception Is Real Even When It Is Not Reality
Perceive and don’t tolerate problems. On your way to your goals, you will inevitably face new problems. However, to perceive, you must not tolerate them.
You can see problems as problems and they will continue to slow you down. Yet, you can invert the way you look at it. Problems can be blessings cause if they didn’t appear, it could be a sign of your inactivity. Identifying problems it’s hard. Most people most like to celebrate the things that are going well.
Don’t think your progress will evolve without the process of finding. You have to find what is not going well so you can make it go better. And worst than that, don’t try to run away from the process of identifying problems. Because if you think you’ll feel less anxious by not thinking about them, you’re wrong.
Keep in mind this principle of not tolerate the problems that come your way. Perceive them like a crazy obsession. You will reach a point where you do it, like brushing your teeth before going to bed. Without stress, you will fall asleep rested, as in a perfectly ordinary day.
A Goal Without a Plan Is Just a Wish
Do what you set out to do. Don’t start your day until you have it finished. Don’t start your daily routines without knowing exactly what you planned out to do that day.
Do it every day. I know it takes time and effort to manage this discipline. But there is no other way. Once you master your planning process by the day, you are ready to move to the next level.
Don’t start your week until you have it finished. Don’t start a week on Wednesday. You have to start it on Monday with all your schedules more than ready to be processed.
Can you imagine starting to manage your weeks so well, that you find time to settle down one day earlier? Having time for your reading, for your mindfulness, for your silent moments, and focus mentoring? Because you disciplined?
By scheduling your days, your weeks, your months, they all start to be part of a bigger plan, a bigger design, a long term view of your life. You will start to have a bigger perspective of it all. Because you are planning.
Work Harder Than You Think You Did Yesterday
Use tools and protocols to shape your work. Words alone aren’t enough. How often did you read a book describing some behavior change you’ve wanted to make but then failed to?
Just as you can’t learn many things by reading a book, it’s nearly impossible to change a behavior without practicing it.- Ray Dalio in Principles
Use tools to collect and process it into conclusions and actions. These tools are going to evolve, and you’ll find powerful ones. They will help you achieve the goals earlier than you think.
You have the power of your intelligence combined with the force of technology, pushing you toward systems and algorithms that substantially improve your decision making. Yet, they will appear after a long process of trial and error.
One day, you’ll be managing them with your eyes close. When that day comes, you’ll be prepared to pass these same principles to your children, to your workers, or to your best friends. When that day comes, you will fill the power of giving all back.
That day will be a special one.
Final Thoughts
One day a reporter, in a marketing conference, had the opportunity to approach a dinner table where three of the most iconic self-development coaches of the world were having dinner.
He interrupted their conversation to do a quick question.
If you had to choose one human strength to characterize what you preach in your fantastic presentations, what would that be?
The three gentlemen spoke at the same time:
Will power
