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Happy Tuesday. Each week I share some thought-provoking insights of my own, along with wisdom from the great thinkers I’ve encountered through books, other media, and my network.
Top of Mind: The Power of Coffee
I’ve been thinking about the power of coffee. One some days, the power that 2 ounces of liquid can have is pretty crazy. In Michael Pollan’s book This Is Your Mind on Plants, he asserts that from an evolutionary sense, we didn’t domesticate coffee, coffee domesticated us.
Big Idea: Career Leverage
Most people consciously or subconsciously assign values to different parts of their lives.
For work, I find that many people define their primary work value as freedom. People want a job that they somewhat enjoy, that somewhat ties back to their larger purpose, and provides for their life in some combination of money, time and fulfillment.
As I approach mid-career, and think about the role that career plays in broader life design, I have been playing with a concept that I call “career leverage”.
I believe career leverage is the way to get to the ideal combination of money, time and fulfillment.
Leverage = Credibility x Relationships x Ownership
Credibility - Experience and training that creates a unique value proposition that addresses a need in the marketplace. Years of experience, results you can point to, big name affiliations that provide street cred.
Relationships - Channels of distribution such as a network within a particular place or community where people think of you and associate you with offering a particular solution. The community can be as small as the company you work within. At the end of the day, it’s great to know the right people, but it’s better if the right people know you.
Ownership - This is essentially a platform to operate. It might be your own venture, or a senior role at an existing company where you own certain relationships. You need a place and platform to deliver the service that are driven by your credibility and relationships.
These elements are multipliers because they amplify each other. If you had credibility, but no one knew you and you didn’t have a platform, you wouldn’t have much leverage. It would be like being the best painter in the world in a cave.
Career leverage can come in many different forms. There are plenty of vehicles such as law firms, accounting firms, financial institutions that if you stick it out you will end up with career leverage. There are also other ways to accumulate leverage, such as differentiating experience and combination of skills that offer a unique perspective, network or offering. When I think about the second path, I think about the episode we did with Mike Ablon and his concept of “Master Craftsmanship”.
Borrowed Wisdom: Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the first books I really dug into in adulthood was Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Many people may be familiar with the title piece Self-Reliance, but there were several other great essays including Experience, History, The Over-Soul, and Friendship. It’s a fun look into the mind of a great thinker and his thoughts on a variety of topics.
What I find so interesting is that despite living in a very different time, he captures so clearly timeless truths around the power of the mind to pull us out of the present, and the role of action and values in creating meaning.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts from this volume:
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." (Self-Reliance)
"Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go." (Self-Reliance)
"Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in. Embark, and the romance quits our vessel, and hangs on every other sail in the horizon." (Experience)
"Of what use is genius, if the organ is too convex or too concave, and cannot find a focal distance within the actual horizon of human life?" (Experience)
Reading, Watching, Listening:
The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen. I found this book through Daniel Pink’s newsletter, and have been enjoying it. The author is a philosopher at University of Utah who studies games and data. Essentially, Nguyen outlines that games are interesting because there is an objective in each game (i.e. usually to win) but it is different than the purpose (e.g. learning, fun, growth), and that games present an opportunity for each of us to create our own scoreboard for our lives (i.e. values) and hold our aims, goals and desires more loosely, as separate from our true purpose.
Let me know if anything stands out. Hope you have a great week.
Adam
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