Your Sorting Hat: On rejection as information, first principles thinking, and relationships that nourish
Career Tuesday
Careers, Life and Questions (Sep 26, 2023)
Wish you a Happy Career Tuesday!
3 Career Ideas
I.
"The reward for performance is more work, more responsibility, more autonomy.
Hence choose work that you like, because success will keep your plate full.
Income and status are secondary outcomes from a fulfilling role."
II.
"Rejection is not failure, but a source of information.
It is either a trigger to double down on the same goal.
Or a nudge to change direction and find a better goal."
III.
"Do work that is demanding enough to interest you.
But not so much that it triggers anxiety and paralysis.
Between boredom and procrastination lies your productive zone."
2 Life Quotes from Books
I.
David Eagleman, neuroscientist and writer, talks about how we are not fixed identities but constantly evolving, in his book - The Brain: The Story of You :
"All the experiences in your life- from single conversations to your broader culture- shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you've been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry- and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint."
Source: Book: The Brain : The Story of You by David Eagleman
II.,
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, shares the kind of thinking that helped him make breakthroughs in space flight and electric vehicles, in an interview : -
"I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there."
Source: Interview: Elon Musk's First Principles
1 Question
Which relationships nourish or energise you? What are you doing to strengthen them?
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Until next week,
Devashish Chakravarty
Author of YourSortingHat
Columnist for Careers at The Economic Times