Providing a Catalyst — V1
Every week I’ll share key insights from a conversation I had learned a lot from in a series called, Providing a catalyst.
This week I spoke to a software/hardware engineer at a leading technology company. To keep her anonymity I won’t mention which one. I also won’t mention the specifics of her role at said company as it’s not relevant to the lessons I learned from our conversation.
I started the conversation by asking about her roots to learn about how she got to this moment. I like asking this question because it’s not only a great story to listen to but it also gives me insight about how someone thinks and makes decisions.
From her back story, I learned that:
The difference between people who achieve things and who don’t is that the people who achieve things have a burning curiosity to learn about x. As they learn about x, they acquire the skills necessary to then do y.
My friend grew an affinity towards computers and then did everything she could to not only learn more about them, but to break them apart and rebuild them — without anyone asking her to.
Although she didn’t have aspirations to work at a big technology company at the time, her aspirations formed naturally because of the skill sets she had amassed.
Lesson 1: Work on building skills and getting to know your circle of competence. This allows you to increase the amount of leverage you have and you will then naturally gravitate towards what needs you the most.
This may sound simple but many times we over look it, focusing on — signals — that the outside world tell us are important.
Here’s a crazy idea: what if instead of viewing a degree as the ticket to your future career, you viewed the skills you received and are working on to determine what you enjoy doing and what you don’t.
Many times, there’s a gap between the — the signal — the degree and your actual skills. I’m intrigued in learning more about why this gap exists. Although, I have a few theories now I’d like to explore this topic further in another blog post.
In my friends case, both her skillsets and her degree matched up.
Despite the role she’s in now, at one of the major tech companies, she finds herself dissatisfied.
How is this possible? How can someone who has one of the most coveted jobs in the world at one of the best companies in the world feel dissatisfied?
Lesson 2: Success is an internal metric not an external one. It’s important to be honest with yourself and do what you want instead of what is expected of you.
Success is attributed by the external world to people who create value. Regardless of whether the person receiving the attribution believes he or she is worthy of it.
I believe, true success is an internal metric based on fulfillment from one’s actions. This is irrelevant of what the individual does or where it’s done. Finding that starts with being brutally honest about what and where you’re needed the most.
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