No Experience in Your Life Should be Thought of As Wasted

A few years ago I interviewed Robert Greene about his book, Mastery. Before he became what I jokingly refer to as the James Cameron of writing books, one massive best-seller every 10 years, Robert was 37 years old. He’d held a wide variety of jobs, some of which seemed to have nothing to do with where he ultimately ended up.

He worked as a researcher for movies, and if you’ve never read Ryan holiday’s article on the note-card taking system, it was something he learned working with Robert Greene. If you’ve read Robert’s books, one thing is clear. A TON of research goes into writing them.

Out of the 100’s of people I’ve interviewed on The Unmistakable Creative. this seemingly disconnected career path seems to be a common pattern.

• Before he became a venture capitalist Jerry Colonna was a journalist and a professor.
• Neil Pasricha owned a Quiznos with his dad, got a Harvard MBA, worked for the CEO of Walmart, and wrote 1000 awesome things, which eventually led him to starting The Global Institute for Happiness.

Over the course of my life, I have had a number of different jobs that ultimately led me to where I’m at now. At the time I thought many of them were a waste. Looking back, each one has informed who I am and the work I do today.

Mcdonald’s

My first job in high school was at Mcdonald’s. Even though I wanted to quit my parents made me stick it out for 8 months. Looking back that job taught me the power of sticking with things for the long haul, something that has deeply informed my work as a writer. And maybe that’s why I kept going during the year I almost quit.

Playing the Tuba

I learned a lot of valuable life lessons from playing the tuba for 9 years. Given that no woman probably wants to be serenaded with a tuba, and you have to wait for someone to die for a job in an orchestra to open up, I decided to forego music as a career.

But the most valuable lesson I took from it was the discipline to practice. Years later it’s enabled me to treat prolific writing as a practice with the same kind of discipline.

Tech support in college

When I was at UC-Berkeley I worked in tech support at the business school. Not only did I learn how to install operating systems, do memory upgrades and all sorts of other techie stuff. But I learned what I didn’t want to be doing for the rest of my life. I also got much more interested in computers, the web, and the ability to use technology to create things.

Inside sales/Account Development

Of all the positions I had, there’s nothing I hated more than the jobs I had in inside sales. I spent my days cold calling people and dreaded each day. However, a CEO I met at a company that didn’t hire me said something I never forgot. “Working in sales is one of the most useful things you can do for your career.” 10 years later when I had to call people on the phone about buying tickets to our conference , that experience came full circle. I’m sure I still use those skills everyday when I conduct interviews at the Unmistakable Creative.

Business School

Even though business school teaches you nothing about running a business, there a few a life experiences from it that still influence my career today. I learned to surf because of my semester in Brazil and going to school at Pepperdine. My upcoming book is organized in surf metaphors. It also led me to my time at Intuit.

Intuit’s MBA social media intern

Between the first and second year of my MBA program, i was an intern with Intuit’s turbotax group. It was there that I got exposed to Web 2.0, publishing platforms and blogs. When I didn’t get a job offer at the end of the summer, I considered it the biggest failure of my career. But the things I learned in that job eventually led to so many other things like starting the Unmistakable Creative Podcast, Self publishing a WSJ Besteller, and now 2 books with a publisher.

While many of these experiences contributed to the resume of my failures, none of them were wasted. They gave me enough material to write about for a lifetime, and from each one I took something useful. So I guess Robert Greene had a point when he said that no experience in your life should be thought of as wasted.

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.

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