Unexpected career advice from Aaron Sorkin
Right until a few days ago, I thought this blog was exclusively about movies and series. So much in fact that there’s a story sitting in my drafts about how much I enjoy connecting the dots between audiovisual story telling and my day job. But then I took Aaron Sorkin’s Masterclass.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Sorkin is the award winning screenwriter behind some of the greatest dramatic series and films of our time, from The West Wing to The Social Network. I’ve been a big fan of this man’s work for years (Steve Jobs being my favorite) and was eager to gather some insights on writing. Interestingly, I signed up for the writing and stayed for the broader career advice.
I realized I want this space to be about all the different sources from where I gather inspiration. And yes, often it will be tv and film since I do love me some quality time in front of the screen. However those are not my only interests. I’m curious about art in general -including literature, theater and painting-, culture, travel, and social causes. All of which frequently intersect and open up room for contemplation and discussion.
I’ll build this one step at a time. This occasion will still be loosely related to my initial intention, since Sorkin has made a career out of writing scripts in Hollywood, after all! Now, I could sit here and attempt to summarize eight hours of course into a five minute read, but what fun would that be? Instead, I’ll tap into the less obvious things I relearned thanks to Aaron Sorkin.
First impressions can be deceiving
From a man who’s made a living out of creating characters who spit out dialogue like the words are bullets and their lips machine guns, I was quite struck by the fact Sorkin struggles to convey ideas verbally. He stutters and clutters and jumps from one idea to the next while trying to get his point across. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still extremely interesting listening to him, but you wouldn’t easily imagine this is the same person who imprinted such a mouthy Mark Zuckerberg into popular culture.
I couldn’t help but giggle at the imaginary scenario of Sorkin going through a corporate recruitment process. I could just picture that first filter contact going, “this guy doesn’t seem like an effective communicator, don’t really see how we can offer him a job telling our story”. I’m still laughing at this.
First impressions can be just that: ephemeral and schematic. Someone’s personality or behavior doesn’t necessarily reflect actual job performance. Falling for first impressions can potentially make us miss out of the greatest minds of our time.
‘Perfection’ is a trap
This is probably not the first time you’ve heard this and will definitely not be the last, but work is never truly “done” in the sense that it’s finished and it’s perfect. In the case of Aaron Sorkin, it seems almost crazy that stories so incredibly well told can possibly be improved. Yet, there he sits, halfway through the course, gazing over a script from the West Wing and expressing he would like to make just one more change.
This comes to show not only humility (there’s always room for improvement), but also that getting ensnared by details is terribly unproductive. Either you go over the material -be it a social media post, product package, Excel sheet- so many times that you become “blind” to any potential ‘mistakes’ or, on the other hand, you find new ‘flaws’ every single time you have a look. I can tell you a thing or two about that just from writing this blog alone.
One must learn to listen to that ‘this is good enough’ moment and close the door to perfection in interest of delivery. If someone commended to create a new episode for a series every week can do it, so can the rest of us.
Your job is more than doing your job
Sorkin is a multifaceted individual and he brings that breadth of knowledge to his work. Often he finds parallels between baseball, politics and music, and writing. Interestingly, the link between music and writing is also highlighted by different kinds of writers, such as Margaret Atwood (“Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music.”). Openness to topics beyond writing itself is clearly key in the careers of these outstanding authors.
This is a worthy reminder to all of us regardless of our field of work. Many a time I’ve met people who are so immersed in the job that it’s all they ever do. And ‘passion’ as that may be, it ironically hinders them from doing their job better. Stimulating the mind with novelty allows us to explore our curiosity and imagination, spark new ways of thinking and inspire our perspective -just like taking Sorkin’s course did for me ;)
My takeaways
These are just a few of the nuggets of wisdom that I feel apply to corporate careers. While this advice might not necessarily be something new, I find that a reminder once in the while helps me refocus, reconsider my approaches and recharge.
If I may throw an extra tip in there for the road, it is to simply listen to others.. you never know what you can learn! Like my very own office role model says, “every day is a school day”.
