Your Sorting Hat: On unintended benefits, contrarian opinions and getting started
Career Tuesday
Careers, Life and Questions (Jan 09, 2024)
Wish you a Happy Career Tuesday and a successful New Year ahead!
3 Career Ideas
I.
"The best jobs have unforeseen benefits that you cannot measure in advance.
Pick a great boss or team and you are more likely to reach better outcomes."
II.
"Being busy is easy. Being productive is hard.
Doing what moves you towards the goal is being productive."
III.
"A single mistake at work rarely ever costs you a job.
Own it up. Correct it. Learn from it to never repeat it.
Refusal to accept and learn repeats mistakes. And crashes jobs and careers."
2 Life Quotes from Books
I.
Paul Graham, author and founder of Y Combinator, on independent thinking, in his book - Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age :
"Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told."
Source: Book: Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
II.
Julia Cameron, American teacher and writer, on the importance of writing, in her book - The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life :
"Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it...
...If we eliminate the word "writer", if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming what we hear, some of the rules disappear. There is an organic shape, a form-coming-into-form that is inherent in the thing we are observing, listening to, and trying to put on the page. It has rules of its own that it will reveal to us if we listen with attention. Shape does not need to be imposed. Shape is a part of what we are listening to. When we just let ourselves write, we get it "right"."
Source: Book: The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
1 Question
Complete the sentence - "If I had time, I would _______." Can you get started with 60 seconds today or 5 minutes this weekend?
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Until next week,
Devashish Chakravarty
Author of YourSortingHat
Columnist for Careers at The Economic Times