The first life hack I want to talk about is how to get a job you love. This might be the single most common question I've gotten over the years from students, from young people, and occasionally all sorts of people that are thinking about doing a reset on their careers. Of course, who'd be surprised by that? We spend so much of our waking lives working. For many of us, the work we do is so closely tied into our identities as individuals. If someone meets you for the first time, one of the first questions you get is, what do you do? Not what do you do for work? But what do you do, period. Because what we do is who we are. Maybe too much so, but that's the way it is for most people. Maybe even more so in the US where people work longer hours than in many other countries, they take less vacation, and they're in pursuit of their version of the American dream. The whole notion of a career, if you think about it, is a bit odd since it implies that we will follow a unified path with one step, or job building step after another. If someone doesn't have such a path they follow, we're often not sure what to tell them. Often not sure what to say. Let me make two comments right off the top about working careers before getting into some of the specific ideas on how to get a great job. First, in my conversations with people on my podcast The Sydcast, the topic of jobs and careers comes up all the time. If there's one common pattern I've seen much more than I ever thought would be the case actually when I started talking to people about their work, it's that people craft their careers in much the same way that an artisan crafts, or cobbles, or constructs their edifice or their artwork. Sure, there's some people who know exactly what they want. They go after it, and they proceed step by step by step to advance in that career track without interruption, or exploration. But I've asked majority people, well, they're crafting their careers. That means that one job might lead to another, but not necessarily in a linear path. They're figuring it out as they go along, making adjustments, switching jobs when the time is right. So much so that when they're in their say, 50s they look back and say there's no way they could have planned out or mapped out the path they took. To say this differently, most people's careers are organic. They happen naturally and are governed by what they're interested in. What makes them happy? Who they meet? What opportunities present themselves? If you're wondering about or already in the midst of a career with twists and turns, then you need to stop worrying about it. Because what you're doing is not only the norm, but it's natural and it's actually sensible. One of my favorite episodes of The Sydcast was with Philippe Bourguignon which I include as a resource for you in this module. You can read his bio in the show notes for the podcast episode. Well, but I'll just say now that he's a very experienced CEO in the travel and hotel industry, including a stint running Euro Disney. His life and his career is one of the best examples I can share of this theme of twists and turns, except in his case he says zigs and zags. Here he is on careers, ''A career plan with no other end in mind than the career itself is a warped plan. And all work is alienating if it's performed without passion. We create our lives each day, often in zig-zag fashion, never in a straight line. So avoid orthodoxy. Use your imagination by seeking paths that will lead you to the future, and pushing back the envelope of what is possible. Bring your own reflections to things rather than simply doing what you're asked to do.'' I love this sentiment. I mean, it's real wisdom, it's really practical. You'll see some more Philips themes come out in this module as well. The second thing I wanted to share is this. Again, it reflects a pattern I've seen again and again in my podcasts. When I ask guests what bit of advice they'd give to themselves if they could magically go back in time to when they were 21 years old, so many people answer with a similar theme and it's this, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry. I would've spend more time experiencing, and living what I was doing instead of always looking ahead. I mean, isn't that interesting? Let me give you an example. A few years ago, the valedictorian, the top student by grades at Dartmouth, he gave his talk during Dartmouth graduation, and that talk really stuck with me, I remembered it. He was this super achiever, maybe not surprising, the super achiever, double-major, who spent almost all of his time at Dartmouth on schoolwork. Extra course loads, so much so that he actually finished his entire coursework. This was for a double-major in three years instead of four. It was in his senior year he shared in his speech that he discovered what he had missed by operating at this breakneck speed for three years. He missed the chance to be involved in student clubs, expand his friends and his interests, spend time outdoors, learn for the sake of learning and not for an instrumental purpose. In other words, to live his life. It was a poignant speech, memorable even now several years later. His conclusion, he was proud of what he achieved, but he wasn't sure the trade-off was worth it. It's okay to craft our career, and it's okay to take our time in doing so. Rather than reducing the odds of having an impact and having a fulfilling career, when that fulfills your potential. This will actually increase your odds of doing so. It seems like a bit of practical wisdom to me, doesn't it?
