Autonomy

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

We have a vocation when our job involves a strong sense of calling or purpose. All honest work has dignity and can be a vocation. Garbage collectors who keep our streets clean and surgeons who mend our bones contribute to public health.

A state of flow is achieved when we lose track of time because our talents and interests are aligned. Flow is more likely when we have a vocation.

What value does your work contribute to others? Don’t be too humble.

Many of our readers are multilingual. Not me. I speak smatterings of French, Spanish, and Japanese. Enough to ask someone a basic question; not enough to hold a conversation.

As a graduate, my manager sent me on a 2-week, intensive Japanese-speaking course with follow-up tutoring. I later used my skills in Tokyo. Everyone politely switched to English. But my modest effort was appreciated.

Many of us get to do business across borders. If we’re English speakers, we rarely need to change language. It’s useful though to know how to greet and thank our colleagues, suppliers, and customers in their first language. This helps us to connect.

Jim Kwik said, “If knowledge is power, then learning is a superpower.”

I asked my friend John Horner an economics question today. He provided an excellent answer. John could do this because he’s a deep and wide reader and seeks the opinions of many experts. He’s a super learner.

We accelerate our learning by hanging out with super learners.

Nobody likes being micro-managed. It’s rational that we want significant control over our time and effort. Autonomy, relatedness, and competence are 3 of our biggest motivators at work.

Managers are not mind readers. Sometimes they don’t provide us the autonomy we want. We can ask for them to delegate more control to us. Be explicit about the additional freedom you want and the value this would deliver to your manager and the business. If they’re initially reluctant, suggest a trial period for you to have more responsibility. Then your manager can trust but verify.

Scott Farquhar (1979 — ) was born in Sydney, Australia where he continues to live. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology from the University of New South Wales. Farquhar met his future Atlassian co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, at university. He was the only one to respond to an email Cannon-Brookes sent to classmates seeking a partner for a tech startup.

In 2002, Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes founded Atlassian with $10,000 in credit card debt. Atlassian specializes in collaboration and project management software. It has more than 300,000 customers in 200 countries. Atlassian floated on the NASDAQ in 2015 with the stock ticker ‘TEAM’. In April it had a market value of USD 60 billion.

Farquhar stepped down as co-CEO in August 2024 but remains on Atlassian’s board. He’s now focused on investment activities through Skip Capital, the fund run by his wife Kim Jackson. Together they have 3 sons. Some of Scott’s career insights: