| My Two Cents upon Reaching the Decade Milestone |
10 years in the workforce is too long to call myself young, but too short to consider myself experienced.
Voyaging from investment banks to an electric car start-up to a Chinese tech unicorn has taught me a few lessons and I encourage you to reflect on the road you have taken and take stock of how you have grown personally and professionally on a regular basis.
Here are my top 10 principles learned from the first 10 years of my career:
(This is also my tenth post from my website woo-hoo!)
1. Accept the fact that there are certain things you can control and those you cannot. Focus on the former in every situation you encounter.
Blaming someone else’s actions or regretting decisions you made in the past does not help your situation.
Reduce the gap between reality and your expectation by concentrating on areas that you can control and change. If you can do this, your problem will be easier to resolve. You will also be a much happier person.
2. Perspective vs. Fact: perspective prevails.
In most cases, facts cannot be identified, verified, and digested in their entirety. At some point we must form an opinion, informed by enough facts, to make choices.
Perspective is the bridge between facts and decisions. Your perspective will shape your reality. Truth only becomes relevant in hindsight.
3. Handle “comparison” with care. It can break you.
Be extra careful with “comparison”. If you blindly compare yourself with someone who appears “better” than you are and therefore, let envy devour your self-esteem and confidence, you are retreating from success and joy.
Develop a habit of avoiding that mind trap. This is especially important in a world where we are tempted to let the picture-perfect images on social media dictate our worth. Stay centered, celebrate the small victories along your journey, and look for inspiration instead of comparison.
4. Your biggest and toughest competition in life is always yourself.
“How are you better at the end of the day than you are at the beginning of the day?” This is a quote from the book “The Start-up of You” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha that I wrote on a Post-it note and stuck on my wall since 2013.
It captures my core belief in living a fulfilled life. Focus on continuous self-discipline, self-improvement, and growth. Every successful person has 10,000 hours under their belt despite how effortless it may seem.
Spending time to be better than who you were yesterday will lead you further than if you focus on external competitive forces.
5. Owning your specific goal is vital.
No matter how intelligent or capable you are, you will not go far if you do not have a destination!
Determining your goal is the first step towards achieving them. This can be money, freedom, power, harmony, expertise, health and fitness, social impact, religion, or anything.
Ask yourself wholeheartedly: What would you like to achieve specifically in one year, three years, five years, 10 years, and 20 years? Most people fail or get stuck in life because they have not spent the time figuring out their goals.
As shared in my previous article, owning your goals is also one of the 7 core lessons that teenagers must learn to build a fulfilled life.
6. Success is for those who come prepared.
Once you have a goal, developing a plan and doing the preparation work will always bring you closer to success.
As Benjamin Franklin aptly put it, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”.
Although you may need to amend your plans and strategies over time, every change is one step closer to your goal.
Prepare for your interviews, your presentations, your speeches, your next big project, your next social event… so that when the golden opportunity comes, you are well equipped to capture it.
7. Life is a drama: you will have both expected and unexpected moments. Foster your mental resilience.
There will be times when unforeseen circumstances knock on your door. The best we can do is to expect the unexpected and embrace changes.
The world is constantly changing, and so will your career and lifestyle. Building a “start-up mentality” will enable you to be comfortable with handling various kinds of environmental and people changes.
Other habits that will help build mental resilience include good sleep habits, improving physical health, meditation and mindfulness, and treating your daily problems as opportunities to practice optimism.
8. Time is our most valuable but finite resource – use it to make strategic choices in order to maximize fulfilment and minimize regret.
We need to make choices because we all have a limited amount of resources, especially time, which is not gainable.
There will be regrets that result from bad outcomes (but not necessarily bad decisions), but that is part of our journey. Make peace with it.
Mobilize every moment of your life wisely. Identify and capture the “correct YOLO” moment.
9. Human’s greatest gift is our ability to be creative and innovative.
Although it may seem like a “safe” option, the cookie cutter approach to one’s education and career is increasingly commoditized due to rising competition and continuous technological breakthroughs.
Don’t just copy. Instead, focus on being different in a way that adds value to our society.
There will always be someone who has a higher IQ than you, but not necessarily a more powerful imagination. Always look for new ways to do things will help you develop strong competitive advantages over time.
I have discussed this topic in-depth in my previous post titled “The ‘Differential’ Equation: The Formula to Get Your Own Competitive Advantages Right“.
10. Human’s greatest challenge is politics.
Politics is about protecting one’s power and influence and often times reveals an ugly side of human nature. Unfortunately, we cannot avoid politics because it exists where people exist: between countries and cultures, within societies, companies and families, even between you and your partner.
While we must learn to handle politics, our world will be relegated to a zero-sum game if we allow bad politics to consume our moral values. If we do not find a way to transcend politics, we will eventually lose to artificial intelligence.
Our civilization can evolve only when we can consistently build genuine collaborations and consider win-win solutions to be the one-and-only option.
It starts with you and your partner.
Sherman
Time to Mobilize.
Great content! Keep up the good work!