This is a Shitty First Draft post that I never got around to completing. Coming back to it now cause I've been having mentoring calls every week for a while now. Same things KEEP coming up. So, here I am, writing a post about it so I can point to it.
1. Brain Dump about Expectations + Learning
Are you doing what you do to meet your personal expectations, or the expectations of your parents/society/tribe? It's your life, dude. Live it as you see fit.
It's great to be excited ("passionate") about a particular industry, but how much do you really know about it? I hear far too many people who were sold on the 'sexy' of a particular field of work, where the majority of their understanding came from marketing efforts by industry associations or people who've themselves been sold on an idea. Every industry has its skeletons, it's a good idea to find out what they are.
Some important lessons in life are usually only possible to learn by first hand experience, but the reality is that most aren't. There's an idea I read some time ago by James Altucher that reading from authors is a form of mentorship, it's simply a written version of what they would've passed on in conversation. Mark Manson has written something like this as well through his any posts. Tim Ferriss too. You get the idea. You can 'hack' most learnings in life, especially anything technical. Save yourself the money, headache, and heartache if you're a self-learner, plus get more mileage out of your downtime.
The most important skill to have is continuous (self-directed) learning and improvement, bar none. People have sexified this by referring to themselves polymaths or autodidacts. Keep learning. The world and your understanding of it changes at an astronomical pace; if you are stuck with your line-in-the-sand understanding, you will be outpaced and become obsolete.
2. Actionable Next Steps
The time to learn is NOW. Go. Volunteer with organizations (meetup groups, member associations, online forums, companies, non-profits, whatever it is!) that do things you are interested in. Start small and set realistic expectations for your learning. Carve out 1 hour and seek a 1% improvement in your knowledge every week. Not so much to ask, right? Well, it compounds. F*ck yeah!
If you want to plot a course to learn about something deeply, think 100. Set up 100 one-on-one conversations with folks in the area you want to learn about. Dig into everything about it. Format? Video conference, coffeeshop get togethers, breakfast/lunch meetings, or whatever format works for you... Try to dedicate 1.5-2 hours for each meeting. Pick their brain, you pay for the coffee/meal/drink... and write a follow up after each interaction summarizing one to two key learnings you took away. Try to do something with what you learn - practice makes perfect, or something, right?
This is going to be a lot of work. Do it anyway. Your future self after 100 will be so immensely thankful for it. It might take 2 months or 2 years... but get it done. There will be so many times when you'll want to give up, but this is education and a journey to learn, stay the course and put in the work. It is so worth it for your personal growth and fulfillment, plus deeply enhancing the impact you will make in everything you do.
Those who I've given this advice to, some give up and some finish the exercise. The people who've come to me back after 2 months (avg 2 informational sessions per day) or 2 years (avg 1 informational session per week) having finished the exercise... so proud of them and where they've gotten. Amazing.
Which brings me to....
F*ck the unicorn, be the workhorse.
Behind just about every supposed "unicorn", you better believe there was a persistent, gritty workhorse that put in tens of thousands of hours over 5-20 years of hard work. There is little that you can truly control, but you can control your effort.
In most cases for succeeding in business/career, you don't need or want be the best, right now. What you want to be known for is the reliable, resilient one who's been there through the tough times. The one who has put in the work, knows the struggle of getting somewhere worth being, and can value + appreciate others they find these qualities in.
Where do you end up after all this?
Who knows. You can't plan and know everything, but you can certainly be directionally correct. It's okay, and sometimes it's the best thing you can do.
Plenty of folks embark on a learning journey and choose to leave a career that they've started a deep path pursuing. So many of these people I know have made this transitions, and let me tell you, they are the happiest, most fulfilled that I've ever known them to be.
Seth Godin writes simply about the difference between Getting Ahead vs Doing Well in this post. Check 'er out.
Hope this post helps someone, somehow. That'll be a win. Thanks for reading.
---
Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash