For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.
In today’s email:
Cultivate supernodes
Thank your allies
Clump
Solitude
Mira Murati’s career wisdom
ON YOUR CAREER
Cultivate supernodes
We want multiple supernodes in our network. Supernodes are well-connected people who will act as a bridge for us to their professional network. They could be colleagues or someone external to our organization. Supernodes provide us social proof that makes it easier for people to trust us.
Follow-up with your supernodes on the outcome of their introductions. Look for opportunities to reciprocate value. Ask them how you could help them. Ideally, you will be regarded as a supernode in your supernodes’ networks.
Networking is more about ‘farming’ than it is about ‘hunting.’ It’s about cultivating relationships.
COMMUNICATION
Thank your allies
Our allies and supernodes help us thrive at work. They make us happier. It’s worth pausing to thank them - a call, an email, a post-it note on their computer.
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
PRODUCTIVITY
Clump
Switching between different tasks disrupts our focus and wastes time. It’s efficient to clump similar tasks to perform in the same time block. Examples of useful clumping:
Interviewing graduate candidates on the same day
Telephoning prospective clients in blocks of 75 minutes, 3 x per week
Responding to emails for 20 minutes in the morning, at midday, and late afternoon
Checking the logic of calculations when we’re most alert
Spending a morning at a library to write a report
The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
1 MINUTE TO LESS STRESS
Solitude
Solitude isn’t loneliness - it’s the state of being by ourselves.
Disconnecting from technological pings and chatter means we can slow our thoughts.
This lowers our stress.
Sometimes we need to disconnect from the outside world to reconnect with ourselves.
CAREER WISDOM
Mira Murati
Mira Murati (1988 — ) was born in Vlorë, Albania. She attended high school in Canada before completing a maths degree (Colby) and mechanical engineering degree (Dartmouth). Murati began her business career with Goldman Sachs before moving to Zodiac Aerospace. She became a Senior Product Manager at Tesla for the Model X. Murati joined OpenAI in 2018. She advanced to CTO overseeing the development of ChatGPT and DALL-E. Murati briefly became acting CEO of OpenAI in 2023 after a leadership shakeup.
In September 2024, Murati left Open AI which led to her founding Thinking Machines Lab. This AI research start-up is based in San Francisco. Her company raised $2billion in venture funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Murati’s ability to attract investment highlights investor faith in her vision. She prepares to soon reveal her first product. Some of Murati’s career wisdom:
As with other revolutions that we've gone through, there will be new jobs and some jobs will be lost.
Go for it. If you’re doubting yourself right now, but you know where you want to go, don’t let anyone hold you back. Stay focused. Stay bold.
We believe that AI should act as an extension of personal agency and, in the spirit of liberty, be disseminated as broadly and fairly as possible.