I’ve collected tons of career advice. Here’s the best of the best.
1. Most success comes from repetition, not new things. “My whole system of life is keeping at it. The task of life is not to see clearly in the distance but to do the task at hand” — Charlie Munger
2. “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought” – Matsuo Bashō
3. “Doing what everybody else is doing feels like the safest thing to do. But it’s also the most competitive, which makes it the riskiest.” – Morgan Housel
4. To gain an edge, run upstairs. Follow the more difficult path. Start by picking a hard problem, and then at every decision point, take the harder choice.
5. “What you really want to do is just figure out what you are uniquely the best in the world at because you just love it. And then just find out who or what needs that the most.” – Naval Ravikant
6. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.” – Jeff Bezos
7. “You don’t get paid what you deserve — you get paid what other people think you’re worth.” — Seth Godin
8. How to structure a pitch deck. Five steps:
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Status quo — why is sucks (context)
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Identity the problem (new technology)
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Show what’s changed about the world (timeliness)
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Show why you’re the right person to fix the problem (credibility)
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What you can do now (call to action)
https://medium.com/1517/a-1517-anti-pitch-playbook-683f70ffa85c
9. Young people should identify a senior person’s pain point. Then, they should offer to take that person’s work away from them. “Tell me what you need done, I’ll make it my daily mission to do it for you, freeing up your time for bigger things.” – Josh Brown
10. Words of wisdom from Tyler Cowen:
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Compounding creates success in almost anything.
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Always ask better questions and obsess over that.
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Take wherever you’re at and just try to push your understanding deeper.
11. Aim high.
Set your sights on the betterment of Being. Align yourself, in your soul, with Truth and the Highest Good. If you’re not oriented, you bend when suffering comes. The nobler the aim, the better your life. Once you have an aim, focus on the moment. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good.
12. Learn to sell. Every job is a sales job, especially as you move up the ladder. – @sama
13. The #1 predictor of career success is having an open network. This exposes you to more people and new ideas.
14. The Elon Musk’s approach: “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.” Remember: we’ve only taken a bucket of knowledge from a sea of ignorance.
15. Aim for specific knowledge. You want to be uniquely qualified. You want to figure out what skills does society want, but doesn’t know how to get. Once your skill can be trained, you are replaceable. You want to be uniquely qualified.
16. “Aim to become not the best at what you do but ‘the only one’ who does what you do” – Keith Rabois
17. “You get paid linearly for analyzing and solving problems. You get paid non-linearly for spotting and seizing opportunities.” – Shane Parrish.
Run towards trouble. Have a process. Focus on strengths. Accept responsibility. Pass on wisdom and advice. Work with the world as you find it, not as you want it.
18. Continuous learning is essential. The information you need is free. All forms of work are moving towards paid learning. YouTube is the world’s best school. The internet is one big, global library.
19. Love this quote from Marc Andreessen: “The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
