Be impatient

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

In today’s email:

I recently facilitated a strategy day for a media group. At the beginning of our session, I asked each person to draw then share a couple of work achievements of which they’re proud. I like people to draw because it frees the brain to be creative.

Contemplating achievements has an added benefit — it strengthens them in our long-term memory. These memories of achievements increase our self-belief. This is especially useful when we encounter a setback at work or in broader life.

Grab a pen and piece of paper. Think about a work achievement you’ve had in the past year. Draw it. Savor it.

We have about 5 times the resources in our brain dedicated to perceiving threat than perceiving reward. This was an evolutionary advantage for our ancestors facing lions on the savannah, but is often unhelpful today in the office. It leaves us predisposed to negatively interpreting communication from colleagues, clients, and suppliers. The antidote is to assume positive intent:

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-born American entrepreneur, angel investor, and philosopher. He said, “be impatient with actions, patient with results.”

Ravikant emphasized the virtue of acting quickly on intentions — while others are still talking, we can be executing. He tempers this with realism. Significant achievements require time and tenacity.

In the strategy day I mentioned above, a female executive told a story where she discounted significant successes because she subsequently had a significant failure. This wasn’t false humility. She had a recency bias which is common to many of us.

The story wasn’t serving her — she was short-changing how good she is. Her colleagues encouraged her to be more accurate with the way she described her track record. The executive was open to re-thinking her story.

Telling stories to ourself and others is how we make sense of our careers. It’s how we learn. It’s how we identify meaning and legacy. Evaluating our stories is part of the process.

Are there any of your stories that are worth re-thinking?

Aristotle (384 BCE — 322 BCE) was born in Stagira, northern Greece. At age 17, he commenced 20 years of study at Plato’s Academy in Athens. For several years following Plato’s death, Aristotle travelled the eastern Mediterranean conducting biological experiments. Aristotle was then appointed tutor to Alexander the Great. The young prince’s curiosity and ambition was shaped by the philosopher. Alexander said of him, “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.”

Aristotle later returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, where he taught and produced hundreds of works. His writings became integral to science and Western philosophy. Aristotle’s intellectual legacy includes: logic as a system, observation as method, and reason as a path to truth. Some of his career wisdom: