Don’t finish

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

In today’s email:

I worked with an IT colleague who was grumpy when I asked for help. She would chide me for not knowing how to fix more things myself. She presented as disagreeable.

She would then solve my problem. Often reverting with better ways to do things. She worked hard and was thoughtful. Not agreeable, but generous.

Agreeableness can be surface level. People can say ‘yes’ because it’s easier than saying ‘no’. Generosity is the real deal. It’s glue in teams. Reciprocated generosity makes us want to work together.

Don’t bury your key message in lengthy introductions or niceties. Be upfront with your main point, then support it with details, making it easier for your audience to follow.

This works with emails, phone calls, and presentations.

It works in a world where we are bombarded with information.

I almost never complete books, podcasts, or shows that I don’t enjoy. I try to abandon low value projects early.

I feel relieved when I quit things that I wished I never started. This liberates me to do something better with my time. To be more productive.

Our brains are wired to avoid realising losses. We can flip our evolution. But we can flip our evolution. And see that taking a short term loss helps us avoid a large long term loss.

There are times we should quit faster. Times to tell ourselves, “Don’t finish.”

When I hear “work-life balance”, I imagine a tightrope walker with a long balancing pole. It seems difficult.

I prefer “work-life integration”.

Ideally, our careers are an enjoyable and stimulating part of our lives. Not a burden that gets in the way of when we really live.

Integration as a mindset permits us more freedom. We can dial up and down our work hours depending upon our energy and commitments. We can do so without stress if we have a track record of conscientiousness.

Ruth Porat (1957 — ) was born in England and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto, California. Her mother was a psychologist and father a physicist. She completed a BA (Stanford), MSc (LSE), and MBA (Wharton).

Porat joined Morgan Stanley in 1987 as an investment banker. She advised companies, the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve on how to navigate financial crises. Porat was CFO between 2010 and 2015 and recognised as “Best Financial Institutions CFO” by Institutional Investor.

Porat joined Google in 2015. She served as CFO of Alphabet and Google then became President and Chief Investment Officer. She was instrumental in Alphabet’s aggressive investments in AI and cloud computing. Forbes and Fortune ranked her as one of the most powerful women in the world. Some of her career wisdom: