A guest post by Stephanie Denning, who writes about leadership issues from a Millennial perspective.
I wish someone had given me this advice sooner. So much of the advice I did get was impractical or didn’t match my reality. This is why I wanted to bear-hug Shonda Rhimes for bluntly revealing in her commencement speech: “Tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you.”
Yes! That's exactly how I felt the day after I graduated.
We're let loose into the wilderness, after having spent twenty-two years in a very structured school system, We're now at the bottom of the working world’s food chain (if you even have a job). We now have to define success on your own terms.
Malcolm Gladwell speaks at PopTech! 2008 conference. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
However the advice we get on how to do that doesn’t always help. Older people, such as commencement speakers, give retroactive advice. They know the ending to their own story. For them, “take risks” is an easy sound bite, because they know they came out alive on the other side.
Instead, here’s the advice I wish had gotten:
1. There is no Eureka moment
Everyone tells you to “follow your dream.” But few of us in our twenties actually know what that is. At this point in our lives, we’re still exploring. In her book The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter, psychologist Meg Jay describes the twenties as a “developmental sweet spot that comes only once.”
What people don’t tell you is that your calling develops over time. It doesn’t come to you in an epiphany. In How to Find Fulfilling Work, Roman Krsnaric writes: “I regularly hear people lament that they are ‘still searching for their vocation’ or envying others who have ‘found their ultimate calling.’ […] Their search, however, is almost certain to be unsuccessful. Not because vocations do not exist. But because we have to realize a vocation is not something we find, its something we grow – and grow into.”
Dan Pink offered a similar perspective in his Weinberg College commencement speech: “The smartest, most interesting, most dynamic, most impactful people … lived to figure it out…. Sometimes, the only way to discover who you are or what life you should lead is to do less planning and more living— to burst the double bubble of comfort and convention and just do stuff, even if you don’t know precisely where it’s going to lead.”
Don’t let a rotten economy spoil your goals. Use the career and money advice in The Millennial Game Plan to get and stay ahead for good.
2. 100% is easier than 98%
It’s not news that winning at life requires good execution. But why do we still have such a hard time actually getting things done? In his book The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt writes: “The mind is divided in many ways, but the division that really matters is between conscious/reasoned processes and automatic/implicit processes. These two parts are like a rider on the back of an elephant. […] Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement.”
One way to train the elephant is to form habits. By forming a habit, you train your brain to go into autopilot. Which is why, to steal the line from Clayton Christensen, “100% of the time is easier than 98% of the time.” By making it a rule, you are removing the decision-making part of deciding to do an activity. This is especially critical for activities we don’t want to do. Exercise, diet, studying for the GRE, paying bills, you name it. If you skip it just once, you are sending a signal to your brain that you can skip it. From there, it’s a slippery slope. You are back to having to decide whether to exercise or watch TV. And very rarely will exercise win that battle.
Turning long-term goals into habits is especially critical. Malcolm Gladwell has reminded us in Outliers: The Story of Success that to become an expert you need to put in 10,000 hours. That’s about equal to 5 years! Putting in that kind of time requires discipline. But if you don’t actively take control of what you spend your time on, your expertise could easily become Facebook or Candy Crush. And no one wants that. Shane Parrish in Farnam Street elaborates on how procrastination can engulf you. If you don’t control your own mind, your mind will control you.
David Foster Wallace addressed this brilliantly in his Kenyon commencement speech in 2005: “[L]earning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.”
Psychologically, many of us find it easier to say we never tried than to say we tried and failed. Don’t be that person. Be the doer, not the dreamer, no matter how hard.
3. Networking: Become the buyer, not the seller
The problem with networking today is that most people see themselves as the seller and the person they are networking with as the buyer. People are so uptight that it isn’t fun for anyone. Reframe the situation: you are now the buyer. You will have much more fun and it will lead to a much more fruitful meeting.
The good news is once people start actively “networking,” they actually like doing it. Dr. David Hamilton explains that “doing good deeds triggers an increased level of dopamine in the brain. The good feeling associated with this is commonly known as Helper’s High." This principle is also documented in the Ben Franklin effect. You are more likely to do a favor for someone that you have previously also helped.
It’s important because it has been shown that how you get your future jobs or salary raises is often not through your immediate circle of friend, but your acquaintances. The economist James Montgomery studied the concept of “weak ties” and explains “that weak ties are positively related to higher wages and higher aggregate employment rates.”
Networking might seem like a high investment in time. But the reward (both for your work and your happiness) will be well worth it. Most people know who they want to get coffee chats with or who they can connect with for the benefit both parties. The difference is that the best networkers actually act on it.
4. Trust yourself: no one has the right answer
Recent graduates often wait for the moment when they will be 100% in control—the moment when they will have graduated to be a full-blown “grown up.” The truth is that that moment never comes. Everyone is fudging it. Per Aaron Sorkin: “You'll meet a lot of people who, to put it simply, don't know what they're talking about. ... Develop your own compass, and trust it."
Ultimately you have to trust your gut. Steve Jobs still said it best, “Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path.”
People often conflate success with salary and job title. But life is composed of so many variables. It is subject to change at any given moment. Real success is a long-term game. The only thing you can control is yourself: your will, your desire, your perseverance. Success will follow whoever wants it most.
And read also:
Five Reasons To Unfriend Facebook
Secret To Startup Success: Create Like A God & Go Rogue
The Recession Generation: How Millennials Are Changing Money Management Forever
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