After starting my career in the family business (taxes!) and then shifting to non-profit work, I now work in technology. I’ve noticed a thruline: everyone complains about how little they make. The most common reason my friends have had for switching jobs is to increase their salary.
This is my third try at a podcast. In 2004-6, I hosted a short-lived podcast (MindPlacebo) with my brother Andrew. It was really fun for us to record. I'm not sure why anyone listened. But listen they did: we reached about 60 people per episode and began a regular listener mailbag, where people wrote in and we made jokes about their emails.
I cried when I read this.
Greetings friends and Happy New Year!
Last week, Friday came and went without me even noticing. I was deep into a kitchen painting job on Saturday morning before I realized that I’d neglected to send this email.
This week, we’re back with the normal set of links: great writing and interesting ideas on our usual themes. Enjoy the reading!
My career has taken me to three cities, working for four companies in at least four distinct positions. It has been a bit of a sojourn, but there are through lines to each place and position and even in the pivots in between. I come back to these pivots and lines when talking to others about their career choices. When it goes well, it's usually because we've learned something, when it goes poorly, it's usually because we've ignored the same lesson. Thus, I thought my story and an exploration of the good and bad reasons behind each pivot may help your career planning. Thus this essay is my attempt to tell the story of a career in pivots.
It was a big launch meeting: here’s the new CRM! My pitch was polished; the screenshots and demos were airtight. We gathered in the conference room, but then the whole thing landed with a thud.
When I’d finished the first part of the presentation and was about to switch into the demo, the first question was, “do we have to use this?” Followed up with a senior partner musing, “yeah, why do we even need a CRM?”
We hadn't even launched, and the CRM implementation was about to fail.
On LinkedIn this week I saw a post from LL Bean. And as an exiled Mainer, I had to click the link. Its headline was arresting: “Social distancing does not mean staying inside.” One wouldn’t think this needed to be said. On the other hand, endlessly online celebrities having been telling us to stay inside at home. But, keeping a safe distance from others and aiming not to spread the virus doesn’t require endless Netflix on the couch. We can be safe and be outside. Perhaps, it’s even safer to be outside.
When starting a consulting call these days, the first thing everyone discusses is how COVID-19 and its self-quarantine impacts our lives. But, aside from now working from home, the COVID-19 quarantine doesn’t disrupt my life all that much.
Why? I live a calm lifestyle, constructed from simple, repeating patterns. With work and home, parenting and hobbies, my life alternates work and rest. It’s a life to be lived consistently for decades. The kind from which you don’t need a vacation. It’s a calm life: valuing simplicity over complexity, time over speed, limits over stimuli.