Over the last few years, I’ve been jotting down ideas, concepts and general ethics I want to make sure she understands. Each of these items I learned the hard way and never learned in school. I think every parent goes through this, in that we want our children to struggle less than we did through life. Whether it’s how you choose to raise them differently than you were raised, or general concepts that you’re not sure that they know or understand. I’ve done the best I could being a father, and I love my daughter with all of my heart. Because of this, I wanted to combine some of these ideas into a series of 3 posts for her, split up under the loose categories of Work, Relationships and Self.
Work
- Please learn how to balance work and life
- While it’s very important to work hard for what you get, if you lose yourself in your work, you will be miserable. It took me an embarrassingly long time and quite a bit of misery to figure this out. Balancing your life with interests outside of work is very important.
- Don’t anthropomorphize a company, companies won’t care for you, people will
- A company or business is not a person. If it were a person, it would be a sociopathic greed monster. Companies are primarily, secondarily and tertiary focused on making more money (‘fiduciary responsibility’). There is rarely humanity involved, so be careful.
- Your ability to (ethically) influence people are directly proportional to succeeding at your goals
- You don’t have to be a manager to be a leader, the key is influence and whether people listen to you and consider what you say. If you can influence people successfully, the skies the limit to your potential in the world. Here’s a great book on the subject!
- There’s always a bigger fish
- If you work long and hard enough at something, you’ll get pretty good at it. Don’t let that turn you into an egotistical nightmare. There’s always someone better than you are at any given thing. Be humble and be nice, no matter how frustrated you may feel.
- Even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, everything changes eventually
- I’d been stuck in a frustrating rut a few times in my career, feeling like I was imprisoned in the present routine of things. I couldn’t visualize my boss leaving or being promoted, or his boss leaving or being promoted, which meant I was stuck. I was tired of constantly battling with colleagues I didn’t see eye to eye with. Within a few months everything had changed, and I’m very thankful I had the patience to wait it out instead of leaving and starting somewhere new ‘from square one’. You may be in a situation it makes sense to move on, just make sure you carefully consider it.
- Integrity is rare. Trust but Verify
- Integrity is somewhat uncommon to rare. It’s been my experience that most people when it’s in their benefit will do the right thing. I always want to trust people, but if you ever need to trust someone with something important, make sure you can independently verify the results so you don’t get taken advantage of.
- What is success? How is it defined for you and how that is different for others
- The definition of success for me changed multiple times throughout my life, it’s important to keep a finger on the pulse of what success means for you at any given point and whether the current place you’re in life aligns with that definition. If it does, great, if not it may be time for a change. While you may be on the same team or have people on your team, don’t assume your goals are in alignment and ensure to take time to understand where they are and how you can help each other and advance your initiatives or goals.
