More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 22 - May 28, 2019
her excellent book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20:
lucky people are open-minded, upbeat, proactive, and always willing to try something new. While it’s good to be directed in your career, you’ll want to stay open and alert to unexpected possibilities. And when they show up, act on them. You never know what the outcome might be.
What new skills do you want to develop? To whom should you reach out to be your mentor? Should you take on that big new project at work—the one that kind of scares you?
There are two types of work in this world. The first is the obligatory kind, the work we do because of a job or a contract, often with an eye
on the clock. The second—very different—type of work we do is “work with intention.”
Aside from lots of hard work, great creative careers are powered by an intersection of three factors: interest, skill, and opportunity.
Reaching for greatness without a genuine interest in the field is like running a marathon after fasting. Remarkable achievements are fueled by genuine interest.
The skills you have are helpful indicators of the opportunities that are most likely to flourish under your leadership. Of course, skills alone are insufficient. But when paired with a genuine interest and a new opportunity, your innate capabilities can truly shine, opening the path to success.
This is why personal introductions, conferences, and other networking efforts really pay off. Just surrounding yourself with more activity will inherently increase your “opportunity stream”—the chance happenings that lead you closer to your genuine interests.
When you make choices that will affect your career, aim for the intersection of your genuine interests, skills, and opportunities.
Making Ideas Happen.
Expose yourself to new situations, keep an open mind, and be proactive about pursuing chance opportunities. Luck comes to those who seek it.
The kind of feedback we get from parents, teachers, and mentors when we are young has a major impact on the beliefs we develop about our abilities—including whether we see them as innate and unchangeable or as capable of developing through effort and practice. Telling a young artist that she is “so creative,” “so talented,” or “has such a gift” implies that creativity
and talent are qualities you either have or you don’t. The net result: when a project doesn’t turn out so well, or the artist’s work is rejected, she takes it as evidence that she isn’t very “creative” or “talented” after all, rather than seeing the feedback as a sign that she needs to dig deeper, try harder, or find a new approach.
TWO MIND-SETS: BE GOOD VS. GET BETTER We all approach the goals we pursue with one of two mind-sets: what I call the Be Good mind-set, where the focus is on proving that you already have a lot of ability and that you know exactly what you’re doing, and the Get Better mind-set, where the focus is on developing
Often, when we tackle a new project, we expect to be able to do the work flawlessly no matter how challenging it might be. The focus is all about Being Good, and the prospect becomes daunting. The irony is that all this pressure to Be Good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on Getting Better.
When it comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort, and persistence matter a lot. Change really is always possible—there is no ability that can’t be developed with effort. So the next time you find yourself thinking, “But I’m just not good at this,” remember: you’re just not good at it yet.
Her books include Succeed, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, and Focus.
